347. But life has no beginning; it is an eternal cycle. And the instigator of the details, or colouring, of this cycle is the living being. It is the separate details in this cycle which have a beginning and an end. But the instigator of that which has a beginning and an end must have preceded such a beginning. How else could a detail have come into being? And if the instigator did not exist after the cessation or end of such detail, then its entire manifestation would have been without purpose. If the instigator of the creation should not himself benefit from the experience of the creation, then who should? It would be quite unjust if those experiences were to benefit others while the instigator himself perished. This would mean that certain individuals were able to harvest or acquire all the pleasant things sown by others, while those who had brought about the cause or basis of the production of those pleasant things – possibly with great difficulty – would themselves never be able to enjoy the benefits of their own sowing, their own creation. But Nature's laws are not of this kind. The one who gets his feet wet must suffer the consequences. No one catches a cold because his neighbour is too thinly clad.
      It is true that from the perspective of ordinary terrestrial people, many appear to suffer unjustly while others gain a great many advantages which they have not lifted a finger to produce and do not deserve. But this concept is again based entirely on terrestrial people's all too limited horizon which spans merely the lifetime of the terrestrial human body and consequently has no perspective at all of eternity. The individual sees himself only as something temporal. He considers his existence identical with the lifetime of his body and has thereby excluded from his day-consciousness everything that he might have experienced before the existence of this body. In this way he is deprived of all prerequisites for understanding his future after the termination or dissolution of this body.