770. So what is it that the living being breaks down and builds up in order to produce the transformation that in turn amounts to its own experience of life? Well, for the creation of that form of experience of life that we call the terrestrial human being, it appears to the purely physical sight that an apparently endless amount of breaking down has to take place in order for this life form to be maintained. Is not all the food we eat and much of what we drink something that we break down from its stage in Nature? Do not a great many of our relationships to other living beings, our fellow human beings included, constitute the same process of breaking down? What do we think about our behaviour in all the situations in which it is an expression of anger, hatred and hot temper, and the ensuing wars, violence, mutilation and annihilation, or in other situations in which our behaviour is an expression of cunning, falsehood or fraud, which can never be anything other than a hidden breaking down of the fulfilment of the victim's own longings and desires? Is not our daily contact with Nature's elements a breaking down in order that we can build up? What are colds, illnesses, sorrow and melancholy other than a breaking down of our normal well-being? And why do such destructive processes take place? Is it not because in such situations the living being has been in too inferior a position to be able to overcome Nature's process of breaking down? Its ability to break down, that is to say, to overcome Nature to the extent that was necessary in order to build up its own existence, its own health and well-being, was in this case too feeble. We see that the creation of the experience of life constantly requires a certain amount of breaking down in order for its building up to take place. The experience of life can exist only on a foundation of ruins. It is not our mission to review the countless examples of breaking down and building up that the purely physical experience of life depends on. This is the task of purely material science and comes more within the sphere of "physical chemistry". Such a review of all these material details would actually be the same as a review of the leaves on a tree. The "leaves" are therefore in this case the domain of material science. But knowledge of the individual leaf gives no reliable knowledge about the actual trunk, branches or outlines of the tree. It is these three main factors concerning the "tree of life" that we would like to shed some light on here.