Rudolf Steiner says ‘Young Souls’ hunger for 3 things;
- First Longing (Imagination): To experience life as life – living immediacy
- Second Longing (Inspiration): To find meaning in life that transcends conventional goals and routines
- Third Longing (Intuition): To touch the ultimate ground of being, in themselves, in others and in nature
Imagination: The youth hungers after Imagination because he wants to experience life as such. The nature of “Imagination” is to flow freely and not to freeze, then thinking becomes seeing.
Imagination is the ability to “see knowingly” and to “know seeingly”. Make what is outward more inward and vice versa. Imagination pictures have vivacity and comprehensiveness compared to the memory pictures which are shadowy pictures of the sense world.
Inspiration: to hear with the soul’s ears and breathe with the soul’s lungs. To truly hear what is going on at the heart of things. The inspired person is able to proclaim the nature of things as everything rises up before their soul.
Music is soul’s air and Life is soul’s dance. Moral inspiration is when man abandons himself to the spirit.
Intuition: Soul hungers after the intuitions of the eternal spirit. Inspiration becomes intuition. Imagination (Egg) rises to become Inspired (worm) and inspiration ascends to become intuition (fly). The realisation that man has of himself of “I am” is the most inward and the surest, it’s a very definite inner experience. If there’s any doubt or weakness in this thought then he has not come to realise that he is the absolute prime mover of things and occurrences. Intuition is the deepest creative power within us and is the highest form of knowledge.
Intuition lives within the soul. To enter into all things, one must first step outside oneself. Intuition is the highest form of love, love that has become knowledge and knowledge that has become love.
Intuition is the answer to the painful alienation of young people today. Every soul longs for the experience of love (when thought becomes pure devotion and devotion becomes pure thought).
Inner ear longs for soul’s speech but we are bombarded with external noises and television & radio sounds in lieu of real conversations. It is cacophony on the human soul. It creates an appetite for more such sounds but doesn’t quench the longing.
If proper longings are suppressed or unfulfilled then they transform into improper longings. We first need to develop imagination which today’s world is being destroyed by television, smart phones and video games, audio-visual aids. Imagination atrophies, children seek passive receptiveness of images rather than stirring their own imagination. Such images awaken appetite not ability.
By Capt. Preetham Madhukar