614. But just as a being can, to a certain extent, day-consciously control his physical breathing – for example, is able to hold it for a short time, draw breath slowly or rapidly, or can breathe deeply or less deeply – so can he also control a small area of his "cosmic breathing". Here too, he is also able to make slight pauses or minor accelerations and he can "breathe" slowly or quickly, though by and large without being able to alter a fraction the main rhythm. And it is just this that guarantees a being eternal existence. Thus, a living being has in his consciousness a faculty for motivating his awake conscious cooperation or resistance in a certain small area of his whole "cosmic breathing". It is this characteristic that we call "will". And it is really the product or result of this characteristic that we are accustomed to call "life" or "fate". But even if this characteristic is absolutely conditional for the individual's experience of his own I or Self, his own individuality and area of creation – indeed the area of his entire day-consciousness – nevertheless his fate as based upon it, that is, his whole experience of light and darkness, constitutes in reality only "local colour" or some details in the being's eternal and absolute fate, his great and eternal "cosmic respiration".
      Thus, the individual cannot with his will alter one single iota of his "cosmic breathing" or "spiral-cycle" and consequently cannot possibly halt, hinder or accelerate his eternal life. That life is superior to any exercise of will. It has not been created by will-power and thus cannot be dissolved by will power. That life belongs to the divine "something" and is, indeed, absolutely identical with it and is just as eternal, for if this were not the case it would be a product of creation which is certainly the opposite of actual fact. This shows, namely, that the Universe can only exist by virtue of the eternal spiral-cycle or "cos-mic breathing". That "breathing" is thus no created product, but, on the contrary, creation is itself a product of that "breathing". An exercise of will by living beings, their stage of creation, or unfolding of consciousness, can therefore in no case whatsoever be anything more than "local colour" or embellishment of that eternal cycle or that process of "hunger and satiation". A being can, by a release of will, form or particularize his "cosmic hunger" and "satiation" but he can never, in any way, cause the alternating rhythm of the above factors to cease.