378. All physical matter around us is thus an expression of consciousness or will. What then is this will? In fact the will has long since become an "automatic function' for its originator; that is to say, it has long since been based upon an independent organ and does not originate directly out of its owner's "day-consciousness". Thus, this "will", or "volition", belongs to a range of functions of consciousness which work independently outside their owner's "day-consciousness" in the same way as does growth, the circulation of the blood or the digestive system within our own organism. But this does not prevent it from having a realistic power and influence on our purely physical fate. Indeed, without the presence of this permanent force there would not be any such thing as a purely physical existence. Without the presence of a power, everything would disintegrate or fall apart; it would be impossible for beings and objects to keep in contact with the Earth. This is more understandable when we hear that this power is normally called the "force of gravity", and that it is the cause of every downward fall. Now, if everything is falling earthwards, it is falling down towards the earth's interior or centre and so it is an expression of a being's "will' converted into an "automatic function". The combined result of this "will' is the physical Earth on which we walk. In the first instance this Earth is intended to be a tool or a physical organism for the use of the original owner of the "will", of which it is a result.
      That we, as micro-individuals, can live and build on this organism, that we can create a base, a foundation on it for our own physical existence, is simply analogous to the existence of micro-beings in our own physical body, while at the same time it reveals the vast wisdom on which the laws of the universe are based.
      This terrestrial globe on which we tread thus constitutes the physical body of a living being in the same way that our own physical organism is a tool or a "body' for us. It thus becomes clear that this colossal "globe-being' is just as bound up with physical matter as is terrestrial man. For just as the latter being cannot dissolve its physical body with thought-concentration, so too is it equally impossible for the "globe-being" to dissolve its physical body by thought-concentration. This being is thus, in principle, linked up with physical matter in the same way as is terrestrial man. It is only representing a higher spiral. In that spiral it is a "terrestrial being".