690. This is in fact a question of perspective. In the living beings' mental sensory area there is, just like in the physical sensory area, a near zone and a distant zone. I dare to assume that it is common knowledge that all the details or phenomena in a physical sensory area are much more easily accessed or grasped in the near zone than in the distant zone, where they are eventually totally obliterated by haziness and distance. The same phenomenon also applies in principle to the mental horizon. And here all phenomena produced by human beings will absolutely constitute the near zone. Whatever has been produced by human beings can quite naturally be sensed, taken in or acknowledged best by human beings. If we see a suit of clothes, no normal civilised human being will be in any doubt at all that it was produced by a human being. For such a being to believe that it had created itself would be quite out of the question. If, on the other hand, it sees something that has not been created by human beings, for instance, a flower, a tree or the solar system itself, it is quite possible that it can be in doubt about the true originator of these phenomena, even though these things by nature reveal a no less conspicuous logic and purposefulness than the suit of clothes. Here the tendency to think that these things have created themselves is still very common. The reason that the terrestrial human being can evaluate created phenomena so very differently lies quite simply in the particular placing of these things within the sensory area of the human being in question. It is not difficult to understand that the suit of clothes, being something that was produced by a human being, can be placed in only the absolute near zone of the being's sensory area, whereas the other things, the flower, the tree and the solar system, must inevitably be placed in the mental distant zone of the same being's sensory area. Consequently, the being cannot avoid being exceptionally well informed concerning the suit of clothes, indeed, to the extent that it becomes a fact for the being that its existence would be out of the question without a tailor, in other words without a living being as its originator. The suit of clothes is a phenomenon that is placed so favourably in the mental near zone of the being's sensory area that the being has the opportunity to sense not only the suit of clothes but also to sense its originator one hundred per cent.
      The situation is quite different with regard to the other phenomena: the flower, the tree etc. These have not been produced by human beings and are therefore placed in the distant zone of the being's sensory area. As a consequence, the being in question cannot be so perfectly informed here as it was in relation to the suit of clothes. The objects mentioned above contain many obscure areas, much is faded and washed out due to the mental distance between them and the originator of the sensory area, in fact they are so unclear or inaccessible to sensory perception in the being's sensory area that the being cannot discern any originator at all. And it is then quite understandable that the being suffers from the illusion or superstition that things come about by themselves, since the being sees only purely physical perspectives and has still not learned to sense or reckon with the fact that all sensory perception depends on a mental perspective.