694. The fact that you cannot see the originators of the distant zone's details can in no case whatsoever be a proof that they do not exist. The microbeings in our own organism cannot see the originator of their own world either and yet it is a fact that we exist. But have we ourselves seen the originator of this world that is the same as our own organism? No, everything that we see or witness of ourselves is nothing but a series of functions set in motion with the help of a whole series of organs or animal devices that constantly exist as a periphery surrounding a centre that experiences, manifests, and exercises will. This centre can never ever be accessible to sensory perception other than as an inner nucleus around which all experience unfailingly constitutes an outer phenomenon or a periphery. Wherever we look, or whatever we turn our attention to, we will always feel that we are the absolute, innermost core in our experience. The same applies to every form of decision or exercising of will. It does not have its origin in something outside. It does not begin in the finger tips or the toes. It does not begin in the skin or the musculature. It does not begin in the liver, heart or blood, just as it cannot have its primary origin in the brain either, since this is also an organ and thus constitutes merely a device, a tool, that is subject to the will, and must therefore also be peripheral to the "something" that exercises the will. Before any action there has to be thinking. But thinking cannot occur through some sort of "nothing". There must be a means or a tool for thinking. This must in turn exist before the thinking. But a thinking that results in action is the same as an exercising of the will. An exercising of the will is something that is willed or not willed. To "will" or not "will" is thereby revealed as a state that must be located deeper in the centre of the living being's consciousness than the thinking, since it is from here that the thinking can be regulated. If it could not be regulated, there would be nothing that is called "will". Will is merely the same as a regulation of thinking. We have now come so far into the centre of the living being's consciousness that we have arrived inside the action and the organism, with the help of which the action can be manifested, and inside the thought combination that the action represents, since we have come into an area in this centre in which the situation exists where the thought combination is formed, regulated or determined. This situation or this area cannot be identical to the organism, since this obeys the thinking, but it cannot be the thinking either, since that is subject to the will. The particular form and character of the thinking is determined, formed or regulated and thereby reveals a "something" that regulates thought or exercises will. This "something" must therefore be the most profound factor in a living being's manifestation or appearance; indeed, it must be its absolute innermost self. Absolutely nothing can exist within this self. Everything must be outside it. Within this self the being in question's very first beginnings of a tendency towards manifestation is released. At first this exists as primordial desire, which becomes will, which is the same as the regulation of thought, which is in turn the same as the combining of the movements of matter and this is, in the final analysis, the same as creation. This creation is in turn the outermost and final effect of the impulse appearing from this innermost self or centre of consciousness. It therefore becomes a fact that this innermost self is the absolute first cause of manifestation, since it lies behind the desire and the will for manifestation and uses these as subordinate factors in its disclosure or revelation of its presence in the universe.
      But a thinking and willing centre can be expressed as only a "living something". This living "something" is thus irrevocably the absolutely most profound or very first cause underlying any kind of manifestation whatsoever. And this cause, as we have seen, differs from all other causes in that it cannot, like these, be identical to an effect of another preceding cause, since it exists before the effect or it constitutes a centre in relation to which all effects can exist only as peripheral, subordinate factors. This centre is, as we have shown here, behind effects, thoughts and exercising of will. And we can now once again confirm this centre or this cause as being the "causeless cause".