The Universe Thinks Through You: Monism as a Path to Freedom

The Universe Thinks Through You: Monism as a Path to Freedom

Before we act, speak, or attempt to change the world—we think.

And according to Rudolf Steiner, that’s exactly where freedom begins.

As human beings, we are seekers of knowledge—always searching, never fully satisfied. Some view life as a struggle between I and the world, a battle of separation, that the world is against us. In contrast, Rudolf Steiner saw the world as an interconnected whole. Science and spirituality, rather than opposing forces, are two expressions of the same truth. If we can grasp this unity—what Steiner calls monism—then both the individual and the world can move forward with greater knowledge and freedom. The concept of owning nothing and being happy will be irrelevant.

Steiner says that a key part of this journey is thinking. Steiner viewed thinking as a form of knowing—an intuitive, direct experience with the cosmos and inner world. In his book, Intuitive Thinking As A Spiritual Path, he argues that we can not describe thinking as a material process, like digestion or how a machine works. Thinking has a witness, a being or aspect of ourselves that allows us to witness ourselves thinking. This idea is central to understanding how we shape our reality.

Thinking it's not merely a mental activity.

So, how does monism help us find true happiness, whether we own everything or nothing? Let’s start by unpacking what monism actually is and why Rudolf Steiner thought it could change the way we see ourselves and the world.

Thinking & Freedom

In the above mentioned book, Steiner does not walk through the stages of Awakening or how to move through the higher realms instead he encourages us to better understand our thinking and to know that it is behind everything and so therefore it is our passport to moving forward on our journey to our inner power, our spiritual sovereignty.

First I want to attempt to explain my understanding of Steiner’s view of thinking, at least the aspects that tie directly into what I want to express in this video about how thinking connects us to our spiritual sovereignty, and how we can then view the concept of “owning nothing and being happy”, and maybe even start to change our perspective now once we see the big picture through Steiner’s worldview.

Thinking is the result of observing something. Perhaps it is an object, a feeling, a sensation within our body. At the time we are observing something we become unaware that we are thinking. So this is the first aspect of thinking for us to become aware of, that thinking, while observing, is something that is unobserved in our spiritual life. We can not watch ourselves think while we are reading.

Two things occur during this moment of observation and thinking. One, the essence in thinking represses the human organization’s own activity. Secondly, It replaces that activity with itself.

The fact that we are unable to observe our thinking in the moment of observation shows that there is a thinking essence, human consciousness.

Human consciousness is where all of our thinking connects. Thinking is where we interpret the world around us, but also interpret ourselves. We can see ourselves, become aware of our own thinking. We become the object and subject of our thoughts, making us self-aware.

As we become self-aware we realize that we are separate from other beings and the rest of the world. All of this is realized through thinking. When we think, and are conscious of our thoughts and actions, our thinking connects us to the cosmos. Our thinking also connects us to our feelings and the sense world, which turns us inward, highlighting our individuality.

This is the dual nature of humanity. We feel a connection to the whole world and universe through thinking, even though we may be unconscious of it. Yet we sense our individuality through our feelings.

Our internal drive for knowledge is because our thinking is reaching beyond our individual selves and connecting us to the “universal world existence.” We search for understanding, wisdom, and knowledge. This is our connection to the cosmos.

This is part of waking up. Letting go of the attachments to the people, places, and things in our lives. This isn’t easy, as “Monism knows that nature does not release human beings from her arms as ready-made free spirits, but leads them to a certain stage. From this, as still unfree beings, they must develop themselves further, to the point where they discover themselves.” (Steiner, 1995, p.169)

All of us are asleep. We have forgotten our power. We spend our lives trying to remember. Some have an inner calling for “something more”. Some have an experience that shakes up their psyche and spirit to a new state of being.

A core aspect of monism is that human beings are not finished beings. We do not live at our full potential every moment of our lives. Monism sees a human being as free if they are able to think and act for themselves without any cultural or obligatory action. We need to work to move through our instincts, impulses, ethical expectations and norms from society. We need to seek the ethical and moral actions within us, not from outside us.

I believe a present-day example of this is the current animosity growing between Americans and Canadians. A day, an hour, a minute before our country's political leaders started bickering and putting their foot down with each other, we were respectful to each other. I personally noticed a growing connection and camaraderie beginning with the Canadian Freedom Convoy. Now there is a big Canadian vs American plight. People are being manipulated. It is easy to get caught up in the banter of social media of our time.

Then let's get into how these other aspects of thinking can help us to be one with the universe. And how being free in spirit, sovereign, can impact the idea of “owning nothing and being happy”. A common phrase floating around in our time.

Steiner states the case that we need to be able to think for ourselves and not rely on others. This is hard to do in the social media of our time with so many personal opinions and perspectives out there raising up many lower emotions like anger, frustration, confusion, doubt, and a loss of faith in humanity.

Steiner believed that it is important for each human to follow their own goals and their own ideas. The human being is not free if they have to follow and do as someone outside of them directs them.

“For the world of ideas is expressed not in a human community, but only in human individuals.” The world of ideas is Steiner’s reference to the collective unconscious. We do not access the collective unconscious as a community but as individuals.

Steiner states that when there's a common goal for humanity it's usually run by or led by a few individuals that the rest of humanity sees as authorities. Where Steiner sees what is best for humanity is what lies within each individual soul and spirit. That is why we are here. To share and express our individual selves.

Monism hopes that each individual who is evolving can attain freedom of spirit. In our time we commonly say spiritual sovereignty.

“In the monistic view, human action is part unfree, part free. We find ourselves unfree in the world of percepts and realize within ourselves the free spirit.” (Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, p.168)

A percept is the immediate object of sensation. An object can be in the mind and is not required to be something in the physical world. Percepts can include our inner experience such as feelings when we become conscious of them. Even thinking can become a percept when we observe it.

A percept does not exist independently of the individual. It is not strictly external or internal—instead, it includes all that meets the human being, both sensory and spiritual, before it is formed into a concept.

So in this case we are not free, as Steiner says, because we are unable to control what objects or senses come to us. Feelings can emerge that we were not expecting. We can not control this. We have to learn to think about and respond to what we experience. When we do this then we experience freedom. Freedom within our thinking, our creativity and spirit.

For the monist, thoughts are in themselves evidence of a higher power. (Steiner, 1995, p. 168)

Steiner speaks of an Ethical World Order. In this world order, he sees:

• Humans carry out their own will, their own desires, and do not act or do as another expects them to do.

• They realize their own resolve

• They realize their own intentions

• They realize their own ideas, goals, and intuition

Morality is a human quality and the only way for an individual to be moral is to become spiritually sovereign.

Materialism vs Spiritual Happiness

In the process of awakening, is owning nothing, owning everything, or something in between, what makes us happy, whole individuals? First, let's talk about materialism through Steiner’s perspective because the desire to own or not own anything is an issue about materialism. What is materialism? How important is it in our lives and what is its role in humanity's growth and evolution?

People with a materialistic worldview believe what they see, touch, smell, hear, and taste is what is real in this world. They explore and examine the world like a machine picking it apart and putting it back together again like it is all just parts of a whole. As a person explores the world around them, they may not notice that they are having thoughts and ideas about these objects. Even further, there is a part of them that is witnessing them having thoughts, ideas, sensations, and feelings about the world around them.

The culture of Steiner’s time, in the 1890s, was proud that they lived in the scientific age, yet Steiner felt that the scientific age was barren. “It is characteristic of our time that we cling to mere external information and explain everything according to mechanical laws. Such thinking can never understand life, because life can be explained only to a higher form of thinking than that required to explain a machine.” page 236

Steiner describes spirit as “arising from the womb of nature”. Page 236 By this he means that spirit gives rise to everything in culture via thinking, feeling, and willing. He saw the spirit of his time being pushed into the darkness of human consciousness. People were following some alternative narrative that dismissed something greater going on in the world and within themselves.

He believed that there are “laws at work in the human soul that are just as natural as those that cause the planets to circle the sun. But those laws present something that is higher than all of nature. It is present only in the human being. The human being is free in all that flows from this realm. Human beings rise above the stark necessity of laws that govern the inorganic and organic; they obey and follow only themselves.” (Autobiography: Chapters in the Course of My Life, p. 23)

Here, Steiner is introducing his theories on the free human being, known as spiritual sovereignty of our time.

By thinking for ourselves and letting go of society’s pressures, we start to see what Steiner meant by true freedom—a freedom that doesn’t depend on owning things but on knowing who we really are. So, what does this all mean for ‘owning nothing and being happy’? Let’s bring it all together and talk about how you can start this journey today.

Living Monism Today

As I referenced earlier, Steiner says that we do not live as a whole human being every moment of our lives but rather swing back and forth like a pendulum between “universally valid cognition” and “individual experience of the universal”.

By this, he is referring to “universally valid cognition” as what we now call the unconscious. The “individual experience of the universal” is how we take the symbols and information from the unconscious and adapt it to our actions and journey in awakening. Our individual life.

We swing between these, too. Gathering information and processing it to apply it, and testing it out. Steiner refers to this as an “evolving essence of humans.”

If you rely on others to tell you what is moral if you are not able, within your own soul and spirit, to know what is moral on your own. Steiner applies this to religious doctrine. If you rely on commandments versus your own moral compass from your best self, your higher self, which is here to lead you to be free, then you are not free. You are dependent on something outside of you.

Conclusion

So in summary, Steiner is talking about how we need to think for ourselves and not be guided by another human being. We need to work through our natural instincts and impulses and then through our cultural norms and traditions to get to a place where we can think for ourselves.

This is no small feat.

Using Steiner's perspective of the pendulum. We can reach into the universal and think about the symbols and metaphors, and then bring them to the other side of the pendulum, which is to make them our own. To individualize them. And this leads us to a moral life. Be conscious of our thoughts and not get drawn into other people's ideas and notions of what is best for society. Stay focused on your own path. Don’t let others' opinions influence, guide, or dominate your will. This leads us to be able to think for ourselves and to follow our own freedom, to know our path.

These are some of Steiner's thoughts on the evolving human race and what he aspires for us to become. He believed humanity could be conscious of our thinking, our imagination, our intuition, feelings and will to lead us into freedom and to not get caught up in the ideas of the world around us. If humanity can be focused on our own freedom and our own governing morality, then we as individuals will change the world.

If you're looking for some support on your journey, check out my online store for meditations, a guide, and other resources. You can also book an online one-on-one session with me.