346. The manifestation of every living being in existence, regardless of whether it is a human being, animal or plant, regardless of whether it is a being from microcosmos or macrocosmos, regardless of whether it is a so-called "evil" or "good" being, or whether it is "physical" or "spiritual" cannot exist without expressing one or another form of "cosmic chemistry". The individual is an eternal "cosmic chemist". In reality, he is a master of "chemicals", but this identity stands or falls with his knowledge of these "chemicals". Without knowing the exact nature and special characteristics of each one he may lose something of his true position, for then he has to be correspondingly subject to the consequences of his ignorance. This again means that, to a certain extent, these consequences participate in that individual's future manifestation and development of "cosmic chemistry". The energies will, to a corresponding degree, become that being's master. And it is more or less in this situation that we find living beings who at the present time have their abode on the Earth. They represent the zone in which mistakes of all kinds reach a peak. Therefore the zone of terrestrial man is chiefly coloured by difficulties and sufferings, illnesses and sorrows, and this is also why such terms as "evil", "hell", "purgatory", the "Devil" and "evil beings" are circulated.
      In reality, all these terms express a culminating disharmony with the laws of life, a culminating lack of knowledge as to the absolute truth regarding existence. Indeed, in actual fact there is nothing of any kind in existence that is in any way imperfect.
      Through "cosmic chemistry" we will now see – as already discussed – that, like everything else in existence, ignorance and knowledge are created realities and that all experience of life is determined precisely by these two contrasting conditions and that they could never have come about if they did not manifest themselves for the individual as an eternal rhythmic movement from knowledge to ignorance and back to knowledge again, only to return again to ignorance and so on back and forth eternally. Therefore, within this rhythmic movement, terrestrial man finds himself in a movement onwards towards knowledge. And as his receding perspective points down towards a greater ignorance and primitivity and loses itself in the so-called "darkness of the past" or the "beginning of time" (also an expression whose origin is based on ignorance), then it is this "darkness" which is his greatest hindrance in attaining true understanding. He thinks that in this "darkness" lies the "beginning" of things. His concept of existence is, therefore, based on the very culmination of the contrast to reality itself, namely the superstition that life has a beginning and an end. Consequently his eternal nature and true identity is incomprehensible to him. He believes himself to be one with all that is temporal. The master of life has become the victim of death.