[544] as just developed? This again leads us to the problem of the law^a. We speak about the moral imperative^b---imperative means commandment, and a concrete commandment formulated universally means a law. So the first question we have to discuss in this third realm of problems is the question of the meaning of the law. The law can be understood ONLY---if it is rightly understood--- as natural law^c. What does this mean? I spoke about it last time: the law which is the structure of our own being, and therefore not something commanded from outside, neither by a tyrannical law, or a society, or by a totalitarian government, or by fear, but something which is our OWN being. The law, however fragmentarily we are aware of it, is our OWN being---the structure of our being in relation to ourselves and to others. This structure is not something strange to us, but it is WE OURSELVES---but in a special form. Law is only where there is estrangement.^d We stand under the law because we are ESTRANGED from ourselves and our true and essential being.

Since this is the nature of the law^e, something very important follows from it. It follows from it that there is NO law in man's mythological state, from which he comes--- in the midst of all nations, called the Paradise---because there man is IDENTICAL with his law. Only if he wants to TRANSCEND the Paradise by eating [of] the tree of knowledge and power, only then the law appears. And there is no law in the state of fulfillment, when man again is what he essentially is. But for the time between, it is both law and conquest of law. We are under the law, but there is also a power in us which makes it possible for us to fulfill the law, fragmentarily, but anyhow