639. In the course of Chapter 11 we have collected an extensive amount of material for our explanation of that aspect of life that can be described as "cosmic chemistry". As this material reveals several incontestable facts that are essential to a firm, overall view of the further development of the perception of the absolute truth in the reader's consciousness, we will, before going any further in our explanations of "cosmic chemistry", gather together some of the most important of these facts or fundamental realities into two symbols so as to give the reader a concentrated summary of the wide range of material contained in Chapter 11.
      As can be seen from this material, each of the qualities of the living being's consciousness represents an atmosphere with climates and moods similar to the physical atmosphere. These constitute stages or links in a cycle. This cycle represents a fundamental principle that exists eternally and that is evident everywhere in all forms of life experience, in all forms of manifestation or creation, whether in the area that we call "Nature" or in the area that constitutes the living being's consciousness; it appears at the uttermost limits of the visible universe just as much as in the innermost regions of the living being's heart and thoughts. This principle consists of a manifestation of contrasts and is in fact the very principle of contrast itself.
      No form of contrast can therefore exist or come about without being based on the culmination of its opposite. Because of this, every such culmination will therefore invariably give rise to the formation of its opposite. It is also on this account that summer and winter, day and night, sunshine and rain follow each other in a continuous alternation, in the same way that hunger and satiation in the physical and mental manifestation of the living being do. All manifestation in existence is therefore a cycle. We have already touched on this cycle several times here in "Livets Bog (The Book of Life)" (see sections 37, 45 and 461) and have learned how the living being's eternal existence or consciousness is an eternally changing state between the two contrasts we have called "evolution" and "involution". A being's experience of the culmination of these two contrasts thus constitutes a single cycle. But because such a cycle is followed by a new cycle and then another one and so on, we have described it as a "spiral". Such a "spiral" is the expression of a section of life experience, the details of which when taken in a logical sequence make up the individual's equal experience of the culmination of two contrasts. But as all existing details in every experience are contrasts, one can understand that this spiral or cycle is repeated in a multiplicity of forms and states, and represents an equal number of degrees of time or age. There will be cycles that are completed in a fraction of a second, while others need thousands, or even millions, of years to be manifested or completed.
      Our sole purpose with regard to all this multiplicity is to show the actual principle of such a cycle. Its size or age is not important in this connection. The principle is exactly the same in all of them, whether large or small. But all things that we deal with or come into contact with represent links in spirals or cycles. Nothing can exist without having this identity.