604. This "cycle" is experienced by the living being as a movement from manifestation to manifestation. The most profound factor in this movement is "primordial desire". This is indeed automatic by nature, but spreads itself deep down in the living being's subconscious and is experienced in its "day-consciousness" as being synonymous with ordinary, voluntary conscious desire. This desire, again, is felt as an attraction between the I and the substances or materials in its current manifestation, such as food and drink, clothes, house and home, money and so on. And, of course, to these must also be added sexual desire. The regulating of these desires happens quite automatically. The same principle is applicable here as when one pours water into a jug. When the jug is full, one cannot fill it more. When a being, through desire, has attracted as much of the desired matter as can be contained in the conscious area concerned, then the desire will automatically cease until that material is used up and there is room again for new material in the same area. This phenomenon is best known to terrestrial man by the description of "hunger" and "satiation". When the stomach is full it cannot contain more and the being's desire for food is satisfied until there is again room in the stomach for more food.
      But as with the stomach, so with all other parts of the being's manifestation. These exist exclusively as the principle of "hunger" and "satiation". A lack or a longing for the actual material is felt as "hunger" and filling up or obtaining the necessary amount, is felt as "satiation". This applies equally to mental as to physical areas. This process of desire and satiation is the driving force and regulator of all manifestation. And this principle has an area stretching far beyond the ordinary daily "hunger" and "satiation". As is evident from the foregoing, satiation lasts only until the material is digested or used up, whereupon "hunger" or desire becomes active again. But every time an individual has experienced "satiation", the new hunger becomes stronger than the one before, up to a certain point. The principle is then reversed and the being's "hunger" becomes weaker after every satiation, until at last it ceases altogether in that specific area – indeed, it may even call forth pure repulsion. This happens quite often in a particularly obvious form within the province of a being's nutrition. A "favourite dish" has seldom become a "favourite dish" the first time round, but only after the individual in question has "accustomed" himself to it, that is to say only when after several "satiations", it becomes a particularly attractive and fancied food. But at this point, the desire or hunger has also reached its culmination. For every satiation that now takes place, every subsequent new hunger for the particular "favourite dish" becomes weaker and weaker. And one fine day it will have to yield pride of place to a hunger for another dish which has now gradually grown to become the "favourite".
      It is also this principle which is responsible regarding abnormal foodstuffs and beverages such as alcohol, tobacco etc. To begin with the individual has a positive repulsion. But a budding desire, based upon "practice" and "custom", "fashion" or "vanity", overcomes his natural aversion (which is really his own protection against such harmful substances), and he persuades himself to enjoy them. After every little enjoyment or "satisfaction" the desire for them grows and eventually turns them into extra special – and indeed indispensable – "pleasures".
      But here, too, a culmination will be reached sooner or later when the organism has quite broken down and has become a wreck. In the depths of such a being's consciousness there arises a longing for freedom from that vice of his. He feels disgust for it. But this being's feeling of disgust for the vice is in reality his growing "satiation" with it, even though it still rages in his physical organism as an unquenchable desire. But that disgust – or that "satiation" – increases every time the being defies control and sinks even further into wretchedness; and so through several terrestrial lives it will inevitably release that individual from his undermining desire and guide him back to new, but more normal desires. A hunger and satiation period of this kind is the same as the general principle of a "cycle". It constitutes the basic principle in all life-experience. No experience whatsoever is a mathematically accomplished and complete experience if it does not show a corresponding period of hunger and satiation. This, of course, not only concerns daily nourishment but applies to absolutely everything accessible to sensory perception. All things are within a "cycle". A being's life from birth until death from old age is a natural "cycle" and constitutes a balanced period of hunger and satiation. This is based on "hunger" for physical existence and "satiation" of this same existence. But of course it is also valid here that for every "satiation" of such a physical existence there will come an even stronger desire, or "hunger", for a new "satiation" and so on continuously until the culmination of "satiation" in physical existence has been reached. Then the desire or "hunger" for every new "satiation" (each new terrestrial life) will decrease and physical existence will no longer continue as the living being's spiritual "special enjoyment". He begins to have a longing for a different kind of existence, a contrast or antithesis to that kind of life. It is actually the very nature of "satiation" to create desire for the opposite. Everyone longs for the opposite of that which they are "satiated" with or have in excess.