730. From section 705 to the place we have now arrived at in "Livets Bog", we have covered so many aspects and phenomena in the living being's life and existence that it has become clear to us that the being's present physical organism constitutes merely a single fragment or link in the perfection of a plan. This plan became visible through the circumstance that all living beings' organisms manifest as expressions of a certain stage or degree of advancement in this process of perfection, and this proves that the organism in no way whatsoever exists as a completed phenomenon. We mentioned that there are beings whose organisms are more finished and beings whose organisms are less finished than our own, at the same time as there exists, as a permanent factor in every single being's consciousness, a sum of wishes, desires or longings that belong to a cycle so large that it cannot possibly run its full course during the lifetime of the present physical organism in which the wishes or desires in question can be satisfied. The fact that there therefore exists in the being's mentality a series of phenomena that have a longer cycle than can be fulfilled during the lifetime of the present organism, made it clear to us that these mental phenomena could not possibly be dependent on the lifetime of the physical organism, and that there is therefore something in the analysis of the living being that exists for a longer period than the present physical organism. If this were not the case, Nature's creation or purpose here would be pure, absolute chaos, that is to say, a phenomenon that, in the absolute sense, cannot possibly exist in Nature. But since we were already familiar with the analysis of the "triune principle" and were in agreement about the I and its superconsciousness, the analysis in question became merely a further confirmation that this I with its superconsciousness is totally above or independent of the lifetime of its present physical organism. On the strength of this acknowledgment it became clear that there was a logic behind the wishes and longings that remain unfulfilled when the organism is destroyed. If the I is an eternal reality, it is merely a matter of course that there are realities in its superconsciousness that are based on a much longer view than the brief number of years represented by the physical organism. And is it not the long view that we witness in the ladder of evolution? Does not this reveal that the I creates organism after organism that is more and more perfect, more and more fit for an increasingly higher and higher intellectual consciousness? And what is more logical and more in contact with the other laws of Nature than that the many wishes, desires and longings that cannot be fulfilled during a single terrestrial lifetime are intended to be able to be balanced out in the long term? That this long view does exist is proved an irrefutable fact due to the phenomenon that the organisms do not appear on exactly the same step, but that on the contrary their steps together express the rising scale of perfection that we know as the "ladder of evolution". This would be a total impossibility if there were not something in or behind the organisms that survived this ladder of evolution and that could wish for or desire the very increase in perfection that the ladder of evolution represents or is a fulfilment of.
      That this wish for an increase in some form of perfection is present in every terrestrial human being has, as we have already stated, also long since been recognised as a fact. Which normal terrestrial human being wishes for its own mental decline, breakdown or destruction? The wishes of the beings are thus in strong agreement with the increasing perfection that the ladder of evolution expresses. But if the I and the superconsciousness did not exist beyond the lifetime of the physical organism, what would be the use of the increasing development and the wish to acquire it? The "new souls" that would have to take possession of the subsequently improved or more perfect organisms can themselves never have wished for this improvement in the organisms, since they have never lived before. And those that wished for the improvement could never enjoy the experience of the improvement, as they would have perished together with the physical organisms in which they cherished these very wishes. That Nature cannot be the originator of such chaos has long been confirmed by the subtle logic and perfection that it has revealed everywhere else in things both great and small. And as a result we cannot follow this supreme logic without confirming rebirth as an incontestable reality. This reality makes the living beings' experience of life an eternal cycle, analogous to all the other cycles that Nature exclusively consists of.
      Through this cycle, life provides access to the satisfaction of all normal wishes. This rebirth or the maintenance of immortality constitutes the tenth basic answer to the mystery of life.