921. The contrasts in the analysis of life that the beings are particularly ignorant of and that therefore have the effect of causing them to live in this mystery or this superstition and its consequent unpleasantness, involve that aspect of life that we know as reincarnation or rebirth, just as the beings also still do not know about the innermost nature of their own I and its superconsciousness beyond reincarnation or the earthly lives. It is a matter of course that such an extensive lack of knowledge of life's highest details cannot give rise in a being to a really clear, day-conscious, true and irrefutable analysis of life, but that this should remain a mystery. But how would the beings gain this knowledge that they lack if it were not to become accessible to day-conscious, physical as well as spiritual experience? And is it not precisely this accessibility that has been given to the individual by virtue of the fact that it can create for itself organisms in physical as well as spiritual matter? Indeed, without it how could mentality or consciousness have been created at all?
      The I, the eternal "something", can through its superconsciousness attract the substances, and in the form of organisms bind them to itself, and through them ascertain the effects or reactions of other substances, and in this way it experiences life. Without these reactions, which are in reality the same as thoughts, feelings and acts of will, all experience of life would be impossible. The I would be an eternal, unexperienced stillness. There would be no thought, no will, no feeling and therefore no movement. An eternally unexperienced "something" would represent the universe, but for whom or for what? Something that cannot experience and something that cannot be experienced will be, from the point of view of the senses, just "nothing". The I or the eternal "something" can, through its connection to matter and through its organisms, experience and be experienced. It is a foregone conclusion that it must always have existed before and after its connections to matter or its organisms, otherwise it would itself have to constitute some form of transitory combination of matter with a certain "age". The combination of matter or the organism therefore differs from the I in that it has a "beginning" and an "end", thereby containing the limitation that makes it accessible to direct sensing, which the I, due to its identity as the originator or true creator of the limitation, is not. The experience of life is therefore in reality merely a chain of contacts with matter brought about by the I. Whereas the I's organisms constitute the greatest, heaviest and most fundamental of its contacts with matter, its thoughts constitute the very finest and lightest phenomena in the process we call life. So what is a thought, and what is an organism? In principle they really constitute the same thing, namely, an expression of life, or in other words, a means through which life reveals or manifests itself. In itself, life therefore constitutes nothing other than the I's contact with matter. This contact manifests as the combining of matter. And this combining is what we call "creation", just as we call the finished combination "the created". The most outstanding and expressive aspects of "the created" are the I's organisms. Of these it is still only the physical one that is well known, since the other organisms cannot be sensed directly on the physical plane. Since these organisms are, as we have said, mere combinations of matter, created or built at the command or wish of the I, whether through an automatic function or through purely day-conscious will and ability, they are perishable. No form of matter, that is to say, none of the seven basic energies, appears in a pure state, but will, whenever it is to be used by the I as material for its creation, already appear as a combination. This means that the material is already in the possession of I's from lower microspirals that are in the process of manifesting their own wishes and desires through it. It is on this account that all substances and all matter is an expression of energy or power. This is the reason why we are able to sense at all. The fact that we can taste the difference between salt and sugar lies solely in the fact that the energy of salt acts in a particular way on our tongue and the energy of sugar in another. As it is with salt and sugar, it is also with all other substances without exception. The specific nature of the substance is determined exclusively by the form of energy or power that it represents. But the power it releases cannot come from "nothing". As is the case with our own manifestation, it can be only an expression of life, that is to say, it can be only thought, will and action. Of course this is not clearly accessible to physical sight when the object is beings of extremely microscopic form. In this case it is impossible with physical sight to see the individual beings. Only when they occur by the million can their combined organisms – together with the will, consciousness and desire, which is manifested through the organisms purely and simply as a collective or combined expression – make an impression on our senses as some particular quality, energy or power. It is this power that we taste, smell, feel or sense. The taste of salt or of sugar is therefore the collective expression of consciousness of microbeings or beings in microspirals. As we cannot physically see the individual beings, but can see or be aware of absolutely only their combined appearance or their combined energy or release of power, we call the sight of this microworld a "quantity of substances" or "matter". And so in the case of the taste of salt and sugar we have defined the two "amounts of matter" as "salt" and "sugar" respectively.
      Whatever we might witness in the way of quantities of substances or matter, whether it be flaming fire or ice and snow, will always without exception constitute some area of the collective expression of consciousness or life of beings in microspirals. That these microbeings are not always so far advanced in the spiral cycle that they have day-consciousness on the physical plane does not alter the principle or the analysis put forward here. Before such a state can be reached, the small beings in the microcosmos, just like the beings in the mesocosmos, must first have a pre-existing function of the subconsciousness on the physical plane, the very function that we know as the way beings in the plant kingdom and the mineral kingdom manifest or give expression to life before the day-conscious state can come about. Their manifestation on the physical plane will be a purely automatic function analogous with the functions in our own organism, such as the circulation of the blood, glandular functioning, digestion etc. Those substances or types of matter whose individuals or I's have functions of the subconsciousness as yet only on the physical plane come under the category of "mineral matter" and to a large extent "plant substances", whereas animal matter consists of the collective appearance of microbeings with day-consciousness on the physical plane.