Will

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The will, the willing' (Middle High German: wille; Old High German: willo; Latin: voluntas; Greek: θέλημα thelema, related to τέλος telos "goal, purpose") is one of the three soul forces of man. The will is most directly impulsed by the spirit, i.e. by our real I, albeit unconsciously, in that the I acts directly on the metabolic-limb system, which in the threefold human organism is the main bodily tool of volition. However, we normally have no direct consciousness of our metabolic processes. We are only conscious of the idea of wanting something in particular; the idea of will, however, is not the will itself (→ see below).

What constitutes our actual wanting has no brighter level of consciousness than our deep sleep consciousness. Our karma, which we bring with us from past incarnations or prepare for the future, works in this initially completely unconscious willing. Our conscious life of ideas has no part in this. This becomes directly apparent in our will to live, through which we overcome a serious illness or a stroke of fate without knowing how. Or also when we lay down our lives for another person without hesitation. The human will extends beyond the drive-like will to survive that animals also have.

Even in dreaming, the I largely loses conscious dominion over the life of the soul, and the actual freedom of the human will is only very slightly developed today - contrary to widespread opinion. In fact, the human will today is only free to the extent that it can be determined by conscious thought. The conscious realisation of goals and motives through the purposeful control of thoughts, emotions, motives and actions into corresponding results is also called volition in psychology. However, insofar as we predominantly make use of our intellect, we only utilise the very smallest part of our will potential. We are only truly free when we ascend to moral intuition in pure thought and thus consciously carry out our destiny from the will of the higher self.

Will is the idea that acts as a force

Will is, one can also say, the idea that becomes really active, i.e. that acts as a force, as Rudolf Steiner already expressed it in his "Introductions to Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings". In this sense it is not a blind, i.e. lawlessly chaotically active, but spirit-filled will:

„Will is therefore the idea itself conceived as force. To speak of an independent will is completely inadmissible. When man accomplishes something, one cannot say that the will is added to the idea. If one speaks in this way, one has not grasped the concepts clearly, for what is the human personality, if one disregards the world of ideas that fills it? But an active existence. Whoever conceived it otherwise, as a dead, inactive product of nature, equated it with the stone in the street. But this active existence is an abstraction, it is nothing real. It cannot be grasped, it is without content. If one wants to grasp it, if one wants a content, then one obtains the world of ideas conceived in action. E. v. Hartmann makes this abstract a second world-constituting principle alongside the idea. But it is nothing other than the idea itself, only in a form of appearance. Will without idea would be nothing. The same cannot be said of the Idea, for activity is an element of it, while it is the self-supporting entity.“ (Lit.:GA 1, p. 197f)

Educating the will to live

In intellectual thinking, as we know it from everyday life, we have only a powerless mental reflection of real thinking. Real thinking is completely permeated by the will, it is a thoroughly willed thinking, as Rudolf Steiner has already discussed in detail in his "Philosophy of Freedom" (GA 4) and forms the basis of anthroposophy.

„See how Hamerling relates to Descartes' "I think, therefore I am". Fichte's mode of conception ... seems like a quietly resonating keynote in the beautiful words on page 223 of the first volume of the "Atomistik des Willens". "The Cogito ergo sum of Cartesius (Descartes) remains, despite all the conceptual hair-splitting that nags at it, the igniting flash of light of all modern speculation. But this is, strictly speaking, not certain because I think, but because I say that I think. The conclusion would have equal certainty even if I reversed the premise into its opposite and said To be able to say this, I must exist." In discussing Fichte's view of the world, it is said in this writing that in relation to the state of sleep the proposition "I think, therefore I am" cannot be held. One must seize the certainty of the I in such a way that this certainty cannot appear exhausted by the inner perception "I think." Hamerling feels this; therefore he says that it is also true: "I do not think, therefore I am." He says it because he feels: in the human I something is experienced that does not receive the certainty of its existence from thinking, but rather gives thinking its certainty. Thinking is unfolded by the true I in certain states; but the experience of the I is of such a kind that through it the soul can feel itself immersed in a spiritual reality in which it knows its existence to be anchored also for other states than those to which Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" applies. But all this is based on the fact that Hamerling knows that when the "I" thinks, the will to live lives in its thinking. Thinking is not merely thinking; it is willed thinking. As a thought, "I think" is a mere spun yarn that is never and nowhere there. There is always only the "I think wanting". Whoever believes in the spun image of "I think" can separate himself from the entire spiritual world, and then either become a confessor of materialism or a doubter of the reality of the external world. He becomes a materialist if he allows himself to be caught up in the thought, which is fully justified within its limits, that the nervous instruments are necessary for thinking, as Descartes had in mind. He becomes a doubter of the reality of the external world when he becomes entangled in the thought - again justified within certain limits - that all thinking about things is experienced in the soul after all; thus one could never approach an external world existing in itself with one's thinking, even if this external world existed. He who notices the will in all thinking can, however, if he is inclined to abstraction, now conceptually separate the will from thinking and speak, in the style of Schopenhauer, of a will which is to rule in all world existence and which drives thinking like waves of foam to the surface of the phenomena of life. But he who has the insight that only the "I think willing" has reality, thinks will and thinking in the human soul as little separately as he thinks head and body separately in a human being if he wants to have the thought of a reality. But such a one also knows that with the experience of an experienced thinking borne by the will he goes out of the limits of his soul and enters into the experience of the world event pulsating also through his soul. And it is in the direction of such a world-view that Hamerling moves. After a world-view which knows that it has within itself, with a real thought, an experience of the will of the world; not merely an experience of its own 'I'.“ (Lit.:GA 20, p. 139ff)

In order to train real pure thinking, corresponding exercises of the will are needed.

„Whoever wants to become an anthroposophical spiritual researcher in the serious sense must also do exercises of the will. The ordinary will to live has a meaning when it goes to outer actions. The anthroposophical spiritual researcher must apply the impulses of the will to his own development, to his own life. He must be able to resolve: with regard to this or that characteristic, with regard to this or that expression of life, you must become different from what you are now.

Paradoxical as it may sound, something which one has a strong habit of doing, even if it is only a trifle, it helps one if, out of one's own initiative, out of one's very own impulse, one resolves to become different with regard to some thing. A little thing, I say, it need only be the little thing of handwriting. If someone really resolves with iron energy to write a different handwriting from that which he has hitherto written, the application of this power through the modification of a habit - here again with reference to the habit - is to be compared with the strengthening of a muscular power, because the will is strengthened. And in that the will is inwardly strengthened, not applied to external things, but inwardly, it thereby develops its effects in the human being. And what I otherwise change in the outer world through my effects of will, I now change in relation to my own human being. And when one goes through such exercises of the will, as they are again given in detail in anthroposophical writings, then one comes to transform the life of desire in such a way that it now becomes free from the human organisation, just as through meditation thinking becomes free from the body, from the corpse. Then that is over - for those moments in which one dwells in anthroposophical research - of which one can still say: The wish is the father of the thought. - When such self-education, such self-application of the educational impulses is practised at the most mature age, then the wish becomes an inner force which unites with the thinking which has become free. And through this one comes to really see what the will impulses of ordinary life are, what the thoughts of ordinary life are. Just as before one learned to perceive red and blue or C-sharp or C, so now one learns to perceive thoughts as realities, so now one learns to know the impulses of will apart from oneself.“ (Lit.:GA 79, p. 94f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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