Steiner's Secrets to Mind Reading

In Rudolf Steiner's Philosophy of Freedom, he addressed a philosophical issue in an appendix (http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA004/English/RSP1964/GA004_appendix.html). It's fairly technical, but the gist is this:

If you're attentive to what you actually experience when you encounter another human being, you will see that you yourself are affected in certain ways. These effects are subtle and quick, but they are real. If you're attentive, you will notice the following:

- First you notice the body - the physical appearance of the person, where 'appearance' is meant very generally as 'physical impression on the senses'
- Your own mental activity kicks in, and engages that material/physical impression

He then goes on to say that your own mental activity, as directed toward and instigated by the appearance of another body, is periodically and rapidly replaced by the others' mental activity, and then restored to its own point of view.There is first a physical/material encounter, replaced by a mental flux and polarity consisting of the interplay and back and forth extinguishing of my own mental point of view with the mental point of the view of the person I've encountered. He sums up:

"I have really perceived another person's thinking."


He suggests that we don't notice this exchange and flux because:

- It happens very quickly - less than moments

- My own mental point of view is replaced by something qualitatively indistinguishable from it - consciousness is replaced with consciousness and restored to consciousness. It's the content and mood that distinguishes the two

I want to add one more reason why we don't notice this exchange of consciousness:

- It's happening all the time, so it's not novel or strange