589. Any form of manifestation or experience of life must inevitably be based on a mutual interaction between the different types of matter in the organism. But this interaction would not be possible if there were no mutual point of equilibrium between the degree of density of the various types of matter in question and the ability of reaction dependent thereon. If the I juggled with pure "fire", a physical organic event would be an impossibility, just as exactly the same would be the case if the I juggled with pure "cold". Everything would be petrified solid and every organic function would be impossible. We see this already when the individual's consciousness becomes abnormal with "fever", that is to say, in a situation where one or another obstruction has arisen in the I's control of consistency and thus the balance between the two important basic energies "gravity" and "feeling" in the organism is disturbed. The organism is permeated alternately by waves of heat and cold, and perspires or freezes, while that being's function of consciousness and thinking becomes disturbed – he is "delirious". In other words the capacity for life-experience stands or falls by the individual's control of the volume and consistency of substances in his subconsciousness on the basis of which "normal temperature" is maintained, i.e. the state of balance between these substances' ability to manifest. Any failure in the control of volume and consistency immediately causes either stronger "evaporating" or "condensing" of some of the vital substances. And in such a situation an individual's experience of life will consequently become correspondingly abnormal. These abnormal forms of life-experience are found largely in the zone of terrestrial man and are recognizable not only as "fever" in the physical organism, but also appear as identical with all that includes "psychical disorders", "mental illness" and being "mentally handicapped". All phenomena of this kind are caused solely by obstacles in the volume and consistency control from the individuals in question. But the mental abnormalities just mentioned are due not so much to a lack of equilibrium between "gravity" and "feeling" as between the higher basic energies in the consciousness and need not therefore affect the purely physical normal temperature. They may therefore be better defined as a kind of "mental fever". In such a situation individuals may well even be very healthy and strong, seen just from a bodily point of view.