686. Now that we have come to the sense of individuality we have in fact reached the innermost core of the very mystery of life. There is nothing that can exist as the innermost or central core of this mystery to a higher degree than precisely the I. Everything that we can otherwise sense or experience will undeniably to a greater or lesser degree be in a peripheral state. With the experience of the I we have come to the real cause of movement or manifestation of energy and the logical creative process revealed through it, which we meet everywhere in Nature, both outside our organism as well as within it, as much outside the area of our own will as within it.
      In the chain of cause and effect that constitutes the second basic answer to the mystery of life it was not possible to find the absolute cause of effects and movements, since all the causes we can arrive at in this chain prove to be without exception effects of other causes, which likewise on closer inspection also prove to be effects and so on continuously. But as effects or movements cannot create or experience but always prove to be something that is in the final instance subject to will and logic, they can therefore never be identical to this "something" that masters logic and the will, this "something" whose presence inevitably proves to be indirectly an absolute vital prerequisite of any kind of manifestation, creation or movement. It is this prerequisite "something" that we for the time being in our everyday existence instinctively and habitually call the I, even long before we have ever given the analysis or presence of this I a pure, conscious thought. This I is therefore the absolute "first" cause of all causes or effects in our own existence. That it is the first cause is established as a fact, in that it is raised above the movement or manifestation by being the "something" behind the movement that masters the will. It cannot therefore in itself be determined by the will, and in this way it differs from all kinds of movement or manifestations. It cannot, like these, be a product of preceding thought; it is in itself "that which thinks", "that which creates", "that which manifests". Since it cannot be a product of any kind of preceding cause, it must of necessity exist as the absolute "first" cause and it thereby differs from all other forms of "causes" by being "causeless". This "causeless cause" is the seventh basic answer to the mystery of life and is symbolised in the seventh star field in the symbol. The white triangle stands for the I or the self. This triangle is connected by some violet-coloured rays to another figure, which we know already from star field no. 2 as an expression of the well-known, endless field of cause and effect. The violet rays are intended to symbolise that the I is the real and most profound cause of this field of cause and effect. The coloured areas express merely that this field of cause and effect stretches throughout all six kingdoms of the basic energies.
      So here in our own I we have found a cause that we would never have arrived at through any kind of purely materialistic research. Indeed it would have been all the more impossible to ascertain, seeing that it can never in any instance exist as an answer in terms of weights and measures. Materialistic research can never in any instance whatsoever lead to anything other than a realisation of a degree of effect. And, as already mentioned, a study of this degree of effect can at best lead absolutely only to the cause of this degree of effect, just as the physical study of this cause can likewise at best never ever lead to anything other than a revealing of this cause being identical to a new degree of effect, and so on into infinity.