183. As the total manifestation of energy on each plane of existence is released as two contrasts which are experienced as the "pleasant" and the "unpleasant", so these two are the concentrated prototypes to which all experiences in any form of day-consciousness can be attributed. On account of the overcoming of gravity energy, in other words a much further advanced stage of development, we can note in the day-consciousness of terrestrial mankind these two prototypes as detailed in the immeasurable amount of shades of difference - as for instance, thoughts, ideas, language, works of art, buildings, clothes, war, sorrow and misfortune - all of which realities can well be traced back more or less either to the prototype of "pleasant" or to the prototype of "unpleasant". With regard to the primitive stage of the plant in the evolutionary spiral, such a particularization could not take place in its day-consciousness. Therefore the two prototypes appear here without details. This means that the plant's awake day-consciousness consists only of experiencing an unparticularized vague sensing of the two prototypes "pleasant", and "unpleasant". And so the form of day-consciousness possessed by a plant is the most primitive in the whole spiral in that it is only instinctive and therefore can represent only experiences of a vague sensing. But although the plant being's day-consciousness is of such an elementary nature, its plane of existence is nevertheless very near to the highest regions of light (which we shall learn to know later as the "kingdom of bliss"); so near in fact that its day-conscious experiences express such an all-pervading vague sense of pleasure, such a penetrating blissful light that, through its subconscious, its reflection or rays of brilliance can be thrown right into the physical world. The "subconscious" means here that part of the being's consciousness which on the material plane is visible as "plant". From the subconscious of these instinct beings - who altogether constitute the "plant kingdom" - such an amount of that light's reflection is sent out which through their day-consciousness is taken in as a vague sensing of pleasure, that it even illuminates the material world to a very great extent. What would the Earth be like, for instance, if there were no vegetation? From a physical viewpoint alone it would seem like a desolate and barren desert. Wherever we find plants we meet a reflection of bliss. That joy or sense of pleasure which the more developed terrestrial people feel on a sunlit summer day when the corn is waving in the breeze and gardens and meadows bloom in a profusion of flowers while the caress of their colour and fragrance penetrates the mind and the thoughts, is thus a reflection of the atmosphere from regions lighter and purer than the rough and lethal material world. But with this reflected light of bliss through the plant kingdom on a summer's day, that declining propensity which exists subconsciously in the individual arises as the memory of a world of light at one time left behind, the remembrance of something beautiful and lovely brought alive here in the midst of life's darkest plane of existence, given renewed power and strength for the stimulation of a longing to return again to that kingdom of light. Are not plants a source of inspiration for artists, writers and scientists alike? Are not plants nature's own gentle touch for the healthy and for the sick, for the happy and for the unhappy? In each fresh flower there exists the contrast to winter's cold. As long as there is a flower, memories of a higher world cannot be extinguished.