Every living being maintains its life – its experiencing and manifesting, its sensing of pain and wellbeing, pleasantness and unpleasantness – by means of a force. Nothing can function and work without the help of force. The force with which living beings therefore maintain their lives we call their "life force" or "vitality". This force has an outer and an inner aspect, but terrestrial human beings are mainly familiar with it only through its outer aspect, even though on an everyday basis they also experience and direct its inner aspect. When a person is tired their life force does not display nearly as much energy as when the person has had a good night's sleep and is in fine form. But the states of being in fine form and of not being in fine form are completely natural phenomena. With every display of energy on the physical plane matter is set into motion. This takes place as a result of pushing or pulling this matter and it takes place with the help of force. A locomotive or some other source of power is needed in order to set a train in motion, and something similar applies to all movements in the world of matter. Such movements can only be manifested by releasing a force that produces a pressure or a pull on the matter, irrespective of whether it takes place in the material world around us or in the setting in motion of an organ in the organisms of living beings. But every pressure on a piece of matter will not only set this matter into motion, it will also leave its mark on the matter. It will create a certain change in the matter where the pressure or the pull was exerted. If this pressure is exerted over a long period of time in the same place in the matter, a stress is created and eventually the matter in that place disintegrates. This disintegration we know as "wear and tear". In all situations where movement is created there is at the same time created wear and tear in the areas of matter that are implicated in the movement. This wear and tear means that one cannot go on using the same materials for ever; one has to continually renew the materials in which one creates movement.

This principle of renewal applies everywhere, in all times and in all situations, whether the wear and tear appears in material things or in the organisms of living beings. Due to this wear and tear, machines, tools, buildings, means of transport, clothes, shoes etc. become old and worn out, and the same applies to living beings' organisms. It is the law of cycles. As a result of this principle of wear and tear nothing whatsoever can be bound to a certain eternal, material state; it is subject to the law of change and renewal. If this law of wear and tear did not exist nothing would be able to perish, every form would then have to go on being for ever as it was when it was first formed. How could the Earth have been transformed from its fiery state into its present structure that is so necessary for our physical-animal state – how could human beings' organisms have been transformed from animal organisms, in fact all the way from mineral and vegetable states, into their present refined state – and how would it be possible to transform terrestrial human society into a more peaceful and pleasant world than it is at the moment if wear and tear did not exist? Just think how awful it would be if we for ever had to be in the same primitive organism, for ever had to wear the same clothes and the same shoes, and live in the same kind of houses and use the same means of transport. But this cannot possibly come about because without transformation and renewal of life there would be absolutely no life whatsoever, no experiencing and no consciousness.

It is not only in the outer, visible forms of matter that wear and tear takes place, it also exists in the inner, invisible forms of matter, that is to say in the area of thought or consciousness. This means that no mental state can stand still or remain as it is, but it has to be transformed into a new state or sphere of thought. On this plane, wear and tear can be sensed as a loss of interest. When one loses interest in some sphere of thought or other it is due to the fact that one has grown out of that sphere of thought and it has to make way for a new one that is more in harmony with one's desires and longings, in just the same way that one longs for a new suit when the old suit is worn out. But it is not always the case that people's dislike of a suit or some other physical thing is due to it being worn out. "Taste" and "fashion" also play a role in this matter. Here the wear and tear is in the person's consciousness to a greater degree than in physical matter. Customs and fashions are also subject to the law of wear and tear. We also experience this wear and tear or weakening in the sphere of interest as boredom. When we find something boring or uninteresting it is because either we cannot yet develop energy in the particular field or because the field, in relation to the experience we now have, has become outdated, in other words we have grown out of it.

We can therefore see that wear and tear on matter exists just as much in the sphere of thought or consciousness as in the physical world. This wear and tear is promoted by one and the same force and it exerts a pressure on spiritual just as much as on physical matter, setting it in motion so that a regeneration or transformation can take place. Where this force occurs in outer material things and also in our organs we call it the force of Nature, and we say that everything has come about as a result of the force of Nature. But as it is exclusively this force that promotes life or movement it should really be called the force of life or "life-force". The force of life and the force of Nature are one and the same thing. But what kind of force is it that puts this sort of pressure on matter, thereby bringing about change, creating attraction and repulsion, and building up and tearing down? Is there not something within our own area that manifests itself in the same way, and is in fact the same thing? There certainly is, and, what is more, we are very familiar with this force. Every one of us has it within ourselves as something that we call the will. With this will we exert, in a certain area, pressure on matter in the form of attraction and repulsion, which in turn becomes the same as what we manifest or create and what we cultivate as our spheres of interest. In this area we build up and tear down; this is where we create youth and old age; here we are the originators and leaders of the force of Nature.

It is in the area of our own life that we find the very solution to the mystery of life. Here we experience something that we cannot see outside the area of our own consciousness, namely the originator of the movements and transformations in matter. We perceive ourselves as an experiencing and creating centre, and we give expression to this perception when we use the word "I". But as there is such an I that experiences and creates and that therefore exercises its will behind absolutely all the movements without exception that are within the area that we can survey, we have no grounds to claim that there does not also exist an I that experiences and creates behind all the movements and creative processes that we otherwise call the forces of Nature. Just as our manifestations and the demonstration of our creative ability are guided by our will, all of Nature's creative processes are also guided by a willpower. And just as our will is guided by our mental structure and the quantity of experience in the sphere of our thoughts, there must also be, behind the will that guides the forces of Nature, a thought-structure and an quantity of experience. And in addition, can we not see that we can learn from Nature's processes that far exceed in beauty and logic what human beings with their intellectual capacity can produce. What human creative ability or exercising of the will can compare with the wonders of Nature? Terrestrial human beings still need Nature's capability as an example or model if they are going to create something of any value. Nature thus makes it clear that we represent the same principle in our creating, although to a less perfect degree, and that behind all the forms or variations of the movements in matter there exists mentality and an exercising of the will, driven by a creating and experiencing I that through these very movements of matter creates and experiences life.

In exercising our will we create our own breaking down and building up of the matter through which we experience life. We create an eternal renewal of life, a constant transformation of spheres of thought into new spheres of thought, and of forms into new forms. In exercising our will, that is to say, by concentrating our mental structure, i.e. our instinct and the amount of our feeling and intelligence, we animate or give life to the whole of our organic structure, thus providing the "thrusts" and "jolts" that set physical matter into motion. These thrusts give rise to the wear and tear that we know as tiredness and the sense of not being on form, and eventually also to what we call old age. Our sphere of thought – our instinct, feeling and intellectuality – becomes concentrated through our wishes and desires into the will to repel or attract certain forms of life-expression.

There was a time when demonstrations of might at the cost of other beings, even to the extent of killing their organisms, were the highest expression of life that we could desire. But this began to be subject to wear and tear in many human beings' consciousness and they began to long for peace. This attraction and repulsion of particular manifestations is, from the mental point of view or in its innermost analysis, a field of radiation. These forces of the will, which are focused on either discord or peace, radiate from our I, through the mental or spiritual plane, into our brain and central nervous system. From there they radiate via our blood and organs throughout our whole organism where they create a particular set of conditions. According to their particular nature, these forces have an effect on the organism, albeit in a way that the individual himself is largely unconscious of, leading to building up and breaking down, deciding over normality or abnormality, and they thus form the foundation for the creation of health and wellbeing or illness and pain. And this not only applies to illnesses in the organism but also to illnesses in connection with how we coexist with our fellow-beings. How we exercise our will determines how much vital force we have and consequently how healthy we are in mind and body, it determines our relationships to all living beings whether in mesocosmos, microcosmos or macrocosmos. The power of our thought and how we exercise our will are therefore identical to our life force. Every thought we think is life force that can build up or break down. It can be life-giving or life-destroying. Our superconsciousness is the innermost source of our thoughts, from here emanate death-inducing as much as life-giving kinds of thoughts. Since they have to pass through our subconsciousness before eventually showing themselves through the physical organism to the object of our thoughts, they will, on their way from our I to the object, already in the subconsciousness and in the passage through the physical organism, be either death-inducing or life-giving, which means they will be either illness-inducing or health-inducing according to whether they exist as hatred or love in relationship to this object.

At the same time that the manifestation of a thought from our I releases the outer injury or the outer wellbeing towards our neighbour, it has already left its death-inducing or life-giving mark on our own organism and on our mental structure. Making it an automatic function or habit to exercise one's will so that it is life-giving leads to health and wellbeing both within ourselves and in our outward coexistence with our fellow beings. It is the fulfilment of the peace and goodwill that human beings were promised in the Christmas gospel. But giving expression to the death-inducing way of thinking, with hatred, bitterness, a fiery temper and other similar kinds of mentality typical of the intellectualised jungle, leads to illness in mind and body and in our coexistence with our fellow beings. The majority of human beings are starting to become tired of and satiated by the mental and physical hell that is a result of such thinking. But how can things change? Change is only possible if human beings discard this now "shabby" and "worn out" way of manifesting, and focus the way they exercise their will so that how they manifest life is increasingly on the same wavelength as the creator whose will has brought the Earth and mankind to its present stage of development. According to the will of this creator we should appear as "human beings in God's image", and we can do this by following the example that Christ has given us, namely of dedicating one's life to others, of serving so that one benefits the whole and of bringing one's vital force and how we exercise our will into harmony with the "will of the Father".