IN the third of his Vancouver lectures, ‘The Force of Habit,’ English philosopher Owen Barfield discussed ways of escaping the mental incarceration that results from modernity’s dependence on literal interpretation. As we have seen, this tendency is reinforced by language and unless we break the day-to-day habits that confine us within a particular box it will be impossible to participate in the evolution of human consciousness.

As Barfield informed his audience, modern patterns of behaviour – or what some might describe as social conditioning – can be overcome through active thinking. Allowing thoughts to enter our heads, without making any attempt to challenge them leads to an unconscious or passive perception and by recommending a series of mental exercises that had been designed by Rudolf Steiner, Barfield invited his listeners to consciously recognise that the act of thinking is a form of self-experience that effectively brings to life the human imagination. In the words of Barfield’s biographer, Simon Blaxland-de Lange:

“With such a tool of enlivened thinking, it becomes possible to venture in a more illuminating way into the world of scientific knowledge; for such a faculty of imaginative perception is better fitted by far to investigate the life in nature […]”

By incorporating the human imagination within the scientific domain, Barfield argued, it is possible to accept responsibility for the natural world itself. This strategy involves transforming both the outer and inner facets of the ‘living organism’ at the same time. The fact that so-called ‘laws of nature’ have become so deeply enshrined within our consciousness, therefore, means that such perceptions have found their way into our modern psyche as unquestionable articles of faith.

Barfield’s solution was to undermine these mental strictures by widening our knowledge of the processes involved and, by doing so, bring an end to the power and manipulation that controls us for its own ends. Returning to Blaxland-de Lange, this collective effort must involve

“banishing present shadows and sorrows with the reasoned affirmation that a new world can indeed be forged out of the old.”