528. We will now return to the living being's I (X1). In itself, it has absolutely no ability whatsoever to manifest or make itself visible. It therefore contains, as we have mentioned earlier, a second principle called the "creative faculty" (X2). This creative faculty is based on that comprehensive organ which appears in the seventh basic energy, the "mother-energy". This organ is the "fate-element" in which the "talent-kernels" are rooted. As mentioned, in connection with the I this organ constitutes the "super-consciousness". This part of the living being forms the "supreme command" in its manifestation. Through the "fate-element", and the "talent-kernels" which accumulate there, it develops the very first, weak form for the expression of "desire" and the resulting "attraction" and "repulsion". The "faculty of desire" is thus based within the "super-consciousness" itself and is a permanent function there.
      That this function can take place is due to a third factor, which was defined earlier as the "subconscious" (X3). The "subconscious", again, consists of six organs or bodies for life. One of these organs is the individual's physical body. The five other bodies or organs are still, to a great extent, unknown to terrestrial man, but this does not make them any less active or realistic. On the contrary, the living being enjoys to the highest degree the results of its activities through these bodies in the same way that the "animal" benefits from the functions of its inner, physical organs, such as blood circulation, respiration, glandular activity, digestion etc., without having any conscious knowledge whatsoever of these phenomena. In this area the being can rely confidently on automatic functions or inherited "C knowledge". And the same applies to terrestrial man. He can also confidently rely on a wealth of bodily functions of which he has no conscious knowledge whatsoever. These functions operate through the five bodies he has apart from his physical one. Through each of these "subconscious bodies" the I is able to interact with, or make use of, the corresponding six great basic energies in existence: instinct, gravity, feeling, etc. So it has a body for each basic energy. As these bodies are constructed of "matter" or "substances", they are perishable in the same way as all other "created things". But the faculty for renewing these bodies is eternal. Therefore, through its super-conscious, where this faculty has its base, the I can eternally create new bodies for each of the old ones which fall short or wear out.
      In reality then, the natural functioning of the living being and its formation of life is an eternally continuing construction and maintenance of those organs or bodies it must use for the manifestation of existence. In everyday life, we know this eternal renewal of organs or bodies under the term "reincarnation". Regarding the finer details of this process of body renewal, terrestrial man knows only that part which takes place on the physical plane, that is the existence of the physical body from conception in the mother's womb to the process of dissolution in the grave after death. As this knowledge actually covers only a minute part of the renewal process in its entirety – indeed, it could almost be considered microscopic – then terrestrial man, or the being who does not yet have "cosmic consciousness", has no fundamental knowledge of what actually takes place. And he therefore becomes subject to the superstition that the life-span of his present physical body is the only physical life he lives. He assumes that he began his existence at conception – or, more accurately, at his physical birth – and that existence will end with death. The fact that he goes on living after death, and experiences life through the other organs or bodies with which he is equipped, and with whose help he can build up a new body to replace the one he has lost, lies outside this individual's day-consciousness. It is not surprising that he is afraid to die, nor that he gradually begins to form a number of attitudes towards the possibility of an existence beyond the physical one, nor that the belief in such an existence can sometimes be extremely strong. The individual cannot possibly continue to live in ignorance of the absolute reality he lives in, the reactions of which he is bound to experience daily. He will gradually have to find out about the true life he experienced before his present birth, for it has left too many effects on his present existence and contains too many solutions to the riddles of his present fate. Moreover, the eternal desire for life and the resulting permanent will to live is a guarantee or affirmation of a correspondingly eternal creation of that desired existence.
      It is correct that there are people who commit suicide, thereby expressing depression or the wish to die, but this wish is not very deeply rooted. Actually, in no case whatsoever is actual death at the core of the wish, but rather the wish for a contrast to that which has caused the depression. Suicide is thus, in reality, only a kind of "escape" from that. An "escape" of this kind, or the wish for it, never arises in situations where all the individual's life-organs are functioning normally and his fate is not drastically overburdened. When someone wishes to die, it is always because he has a difficult and unpleasant fate. He may be subject to severe illness, financial struggles, the fight against undermining vices, persecution and maligning from fellow beings and many other difficulties which leave in their wake the same degree of natural weariness or exhaustion of all the life-organs, which leads correspondingly to depression. So depression, or the desire to commit suicide, is a reaction to excessive life experience, a conscious or unconscious longing for rest; in its deepest analysis it could not, and could never in any case become, a decisive longing for actual death or annihilation. Death is a created thing, which is the same as a product of the I, and can only exist as such. The I, on the contrary, can never exist as a product of death. The "creator" is not a product of the "creation". It is not the "creation" which is the ruler of the "creator", but the other way round.
      So as we said, death can only be a "method of creating" and can therefore only be a reaction in the I's substances, not a reaction in the I itself. The I is therefore superior to death and is eternally immortal.
      Gradually, as the individual becomes "cosmically conscious", he will realize more and more for himself the fact of his immortality.