522. What, then, is an "explosion"? An "explosion" is the dynamic force which lies behind every movement and therefore behind every single form of a living being's manifestation and experience of life. Our ability to open and close our mouth and move our hands and feet is due exclusively to "explosions", so is the power of our heart beating as well as the power behind all our use of guns, cars, aeroplanes, trains and other machinery. Indeed, there is not a single form of power-release which does not rest upon "explosive force". It is true that we do not as a rule use this term for anything other than the explosions we release through dynamite, gunpowder and other kinds of blasting devices, along with the "explosions" that arise in Nature. However, this is because all the other occurrences of "explosions" in existence belong within the category of what is called here in "Livets Bog" "restrained explosive force".
      "Restrained explosive force" should be understood here as a condition in which the "explosion" is not permitted to develop in a wild, free way, but is controlled by a counterbalance. The stronger this counterbalance is, the weaker and more subdued will the explosion itself be, which means that its manifestation also becomes "slower" or more "drawn-out". This "explosion" which is "restrained" and therefore occurs in a more or less "slow" or "drawn-out" fashion is the same as what we generally call "movement". Certainly, an ordinary explosion is also "movement", but it takes place literally at "lightning speed", whereas what we would otherwise call "movement" takes place only at a speed which, in relation to "lightning speed", must be considered as more or less "slow". Thus, those phenomena we are accustomed to call "explosions" represent the culminating speed of an "explosive force". Other kinds of "explosions" belong under the term, "restrained explosive force".
      "Explosions", then, express "movement" and thereby "velocity". And "velocity" can be further divided into rates. So we have here a whole scale of forms of speed or "rates of velocity". The highest level on this scale is "free" or "unrestrained" "explosion". From here, the "rates of velocity" reduce. The lowest level on the "scale of velocity" – or more accurately, its edge – is where "speed" or "movement" is so slow that we cannot sense it. This level is called "stillness". Thus, "explosion" and "stillness" are the two outermost points between which is found all movement and thereby all manifestation. Everything we see in existence, right from our own thoughts and will and the complex movements and turning wheels of technology, to the endless number of explosives fired during a war, is more or less "restrained" or "free" "explosion". The whole of existence is a scale of "hindrances" for the "explosion". Everything in existence which comes under the term "matter" or "movement" thus represents one degree or another of "restrained explosion", and one or another yardstick of restraint. Everything we see – our own organisms, houses, fields, forests, land and sea, suns, stars and milky ways – everything we call "matter" or "things" are, in reality, simply "restrained explosions".