Feeling

Feeling is a different level of movement within the astral body. If will is movement that is visible and perceptible in the outer world, then one can look at feeling as a movement in our inner world or inner life. Feeling is much more than an emotion or a sensation; it is a whole body of experience that we generally perceive within ourselves. While it is true we may reveal our feelings externally, it remains but a portion of the entire feeling activity that we experience and that happens.

This opens an interesting perspective on the nature of the astral body. On the one hand, will is what is generally perceptible in the physical material world, then it speaks of a particular relationship that the astral within us has with the external world. On the other hand, if feeling relates to the experiences within our inner world, so to speak, then it will speak about a particular relationship we have with the non-material world but with an experiential world that lives within. Thus, in a certain sense, our astral body has something to do about our relationship with both the external, material world as well as an inner experiential world. As this relationship is rightful always in movement, our astral body, for its own general well-being, will seek a harmonious balance between that which is without (the physical, material world) and that which lies within (our inner, experiential world).

Let us then put forth an imagination that willing is how the astral expresses itself in the physical world and feeling is how the material world expresses itself in the astral. With this picture, feeling life is about how we experience the world. Willing is how we transform that experience into the physical world. 

Of course we have will activities that will happen naturally or instinctively. These are will activities that arise from the material world. These are not willed from within but rather from that which surrounds us. On the other hand, we may argue that we have a feeling life that also “simply arises” or experiences. Then, in like manner, this feeling life must be moved or molded by our inner, non-material, non-physical world of experiences. For those will and feeling activities that we bring about consciously, then something more is at play than simply the material world or the experience world. 

More can be said about the feeling life. However, it is like a minefield fully of strong connotations. It is a widely active life with movement from extremes to movements of precise inner balance. When we listen to our feeling life, we will begin to sense this to be so.

So far, in the astral body, we have a form of movement; will where we express ourselves in the material world. We have a form of movement, feeling where we take the physical world and express it within in us as an experience. The obvious question therefore is how to make this wealth of experiences our own. To answer that, we will come to the third movement of our astral body: thinking.

Sources: The Study of Man by Rudolf Steiner.

Willing

The human being as described has four bodies or sheath: the physical, the etheric, the astral and the soul. The astral is the body of movement of which there are a number of different movements. This short essay and the two that will follow will describe and share a perspective on the three general type of movement that finds their home in the astral body.

The first type of movement is one that we are all very familiar with. It is generally called: will. If we do a quick internet type research on the origin of the word will, we find that it has meanings that imply choice and also imply wish. Will, even as we understand it today, continues to carry this in the background although some of us choose to ignore that choice and wish may be connected to the meaning of will. 

In the human being, there are at least two types of will: conscious will (clearly if you want to make a choice and you wish to achieve something) and unconscious will. Unconscious will means will activities wherein we do not make a choice. The digestion of our food, for example, is a type of will activity that we do not choose or decide on what actually happens. I cannot, for example tell my stomach to digest the apple first before the chicken both of which I ate. In fact, if we were caught up in this willing, we would be unable to think of anything else. Imagine a situation where we would have to will our muscles to contract, then relax, then contract, then relax, just to walk! It is clearly in our best interest, therefore, that some aspects of will better left unseen or unnoticed.

On the other hand, there are will activities, such as typing this blog, that require conscious effort. The physical act of typing is not one of those. The willing for which key on the keyboard to strike for example, or how to spell words correctly and type them correctly is not something I do consciously. This will activity is moved by the memory that lives in a way in my finders and my arms that translate what I am thinking into this text. However, to create the content of this blog, even before it appears in electronic form, required will on my part. To build the argument, think it through, and imagine how I would like to say it was deliberately willed on my part. I choose to write this blog with the wish to share with others, some of the thoughts that come to mind having read various works of Rudolf Steiner. Unlike the actual typing activity, the creation of this blog, consciously willed, required a very specific type of movement. The movement may not have been visible outside of me but something was “moving” within me. 

When I play a game, for example, there are movements that may be called schooled: memory was developed and ingrained into my muscle mass so that my legs and arms would know what to do. This frees me up to strategize what I am going to do during the game. If I had to think about where to move and how to move during the game, I would spend a greater deal of time on this then actually planning my game. 

Effectively, for those will activities that flow from memory, even if I create the memory, requires a close collaboration with the etheric body. As we know, the etheric body has a very specific type of movement: it’s rhythmical. As a consequence, repetitive activities that stream from memory arise in collaboration with the etheric. On the other hand, will activities that arise from choices and hopes within me, take on a different nature. It is ultimately this wish for a specific result, in other words, this wish to create a future that differentiates conscious wiling from unconscious willing.  

Will is about the activities in our lives. Some we are unconscious to; others, we do consciously. The real challenge to us all is: are we doing the conscious ones consciously and the unconscious ones unconsciously? Can we even tell the difference? To succeed in telling the difference would me to understand the nature of will.

Sources: The Study of Man by Rudolf Steiner.