In this cycle, terrestrial human beings find themselves in the zone of death. They no longer have any day consciousness on the cosmic plane. Primitive human beings still have some remnants from this past "cosmic consciousness" in the form of their instinct. Through this instinct they still feel that there must be something living and governing behind all movements, behind the storm, behind the waves of the ocean, behind the growth of trees, behind the fates of living beings, behind the sun and the stars, that is, behind the universe. It is impossible for this kind of primitive human being to imagine that this is not the case. It is just that they no longer have so much intelligence or intellectuality that they can form purely scientific, day-conscious analyses of the cosmic side of life. But through their instinct and their still only slightly developed reasoning they can, through physical conceptions, hold on to those crucial answers that are analogous with their own temporary being. Just as they themselves become angry, they presume that Providence also becomes angry and punishes or wreaks vengeance on its enemies, and they naturally also imagine that this providence rewards and favours its friends exactly as they themselves punish and reward. Only in this imperfect way can primitive human beings understand and express the law of karma.
      Even though they cannot make sense of their everyday experiences in any other way, it does however show that they can view Nature only as the actions or the ways of expressing life of "a living being". What could be more natural than that they should precisely have a view of this life as being analogous with their own, only in a far greater and more powerful or dominant manifestation. At this stage of course they have to form godheads in their own image. But they live according to this godhead's image. It forms the basis for their ideals, morality and behaviour precisely because it is impossible for the being to think that this living being, with its far greater power and influence, could make the same mistakes that they themselves succumb to. The primitive human beings of the wildernesses or primeval forests thus fundamentally base their lives on an essential concept of God; they believe in invisible beings and spirits or the existence of gods behind life and all its variety of energies and movements. Through this great instinct that they have they are thus inseparably bound to their concept of God. Whether, within this concept of God of theirs, they have a view of one or of several gods, whether they believe that this god or these gods look like this or like that or have this or that appearance does not alter the principle. These beings live in more of a conscious contact or live a more awake day-conscious life with the Godhead than modern civilised human beings, who appear much further on in the spiral cycle and who know a colossal amount about matter, that is to say they know about forms of movement, speeds, weights and measures, time and space, but totally deny the existence of life or providence, and thereby deny any conscious intellectual governing factor behind all these forms of movement and all these kinds of logical creation that together make up the vast ocean that is Nature.