5. The Beyond of the Senses and the Beyond of the Soul

Thus, the soul presents itself only when we become attentive: a delicate feeling is extinguished when I direct a strong thought of observation towards it. This interaction of the delicate feeling and the strong thought that observes it is the first manifestation of the workings and essence of the soul. So Eduard von Hartmann regrets not being able to observe that which changes, while he should be observing change. If he were to start from a point of view that allows him to look deeper into the life of the soul and into the connection between the life of the soul and the physical life than he is able to, then he would say the following about memorization, for example. He would recognize that memorizing is based on the fact that something of the soul has become engrained in the bodily process as a result of me having activated it many times, so that when I recite what I have memorized, the body automatically carries out what has to happen so that what I have memorized comes out again, so to speak without the soul having to be present. The person who is able to observe soul experiences knows that through memorization the soul element moves deeper into the bodily organization, so that there is more activity in the bodily realm than when we form present thoughts through direct contemplation that we have not memorized. When we form thoughts directly, I would say that we are working at a higher level in the soul than when we recite what we have memorized, where we bring forth more or less automatically what the soul has engraved in the body. But then, when we automatically run what we have buried from the soul into the body, we disturb this automatism when we intervene with a directly present thought that arises at a higher level, namely in the soul. It is when we enter with our thoughts from the soul into the automatism of the body, which takes place when reciting a piece of memorized material, just as if we were to insert a stick into a machine and disturb its operation.