665. At this point one may well ask why beings should not always have the same amount of possibilities of development, since this might seem to be more harmonious and equally balanced and would provide greater quietness and peace than that which is produced by the present rhythmic or fluctuating form of development. But again, the answer must be that the beings have to experience contrasts here just as much as in all other circumstances of life. If the beings' experience of life did not occur or was not regulated as a result of an alternately fast and slow state of development, there would never under any circumstances whatsoever occur that which, in the experience of life, we know and define as "rest". Life would be an eternal, unceasing experience of work or manifestation, without rest. Rest is actually identical to the reduced possibility of experiencing that can come about or be created exclusively through a reduction of the contrasts, in the same way that work can be created only through an intensification of the contrasts. The "accelerated" or intensified development is, as stated above, not a question of haste; on the contrary, it constitutes merely the same relationship to the principle of contrast as anything else, and it is on this relationship that an object's accessibility to being sensed exclusively depends or is based.