642. In the symbol the readers will find the six zones of this spiral, each one denoted by the colour of the specific basic energy that is culminating in that zone. And thus, reading from the left in the symbol, we again come across the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the human kingdom, the kingdom of wisdom, the divine world and the kingdom of bliss. These zones or sections constitute the major divisions of the spiral.
      As the illustration shows, these sections are covered with the colours of the basic energies only at the top and the bottom, while in between these two coloured areas there are certain other figures. We can see a black area that culminates in the animal kingdom, from where it diminishes to its smallest manifestation in the divine world, thereafter increasing once again to culminate in a new kingdom of gravity or animal kingdom and so on successively. This black figure denotes the darkness in the spiral, which provides the contrast to the light in the spiral that enables the living beings to experience life.
      As a representation of this light in the spiral, we see a white figure in the symbol that has its culmination or highest manifestation in the divine world, from where it decreases to its smallest manifestation in the animal kingdom. Thereafter it increases once again to its culmination in a new kingdom of intuition or divine world, and so on continuously.
      Once a being has experienced one culmination of darkness and one culmination of light, it has passed through the six basic sections or kingdoms of a spiral. We have denoted the instinct or plant kingdom as number one in the spiral because it is here that physical day-consciousness in the form of the ability to have an "inkling" has its very first weak beginnings.
      As mentioned above, the black and white areas in the illustration stand for the two contrasts of the spiral, which in turn result respectively in "involution" and "evolution", and which culminate in the consciousness equally respectively as "primitiveness" and "intellectuality". These black and white areas show us that light and darkness are present in each of the spiral's six zones and that these two contrasts throughout all six zones have their rhythmic manifestation, alternating as the fundamental principle of the spiral in the living beings' experience of life. As the reader knows, this is completely influenced by these two contrasts. If the beings are in the animal kingdom, the dark contrast is the culminating experience of life. If they are, on the other hand, in the divine world, the light contrast is the culminating factor in the experience of life. After the culmination of darkness, in other words in the zones of the human kingdom and the kingdom of wisdom, the ruling factor is the desire or hunger for an existence of light, while the hunger for an existence of darkness is the ruling factor after the culmination of light, that is in the zones of the kingdom of bliss and the plant kingdom. The living beings' collective life experience, through the successive chain of spirals, thereby forms a kind of eternally continuing rhythmic movement. It is like an eternally continuous breathing. We have referred to these rhythms earlier as "cosmic breathing". (See Sections 610 and 614.)
      In the culmination of darkness on the left hand side of the symbol, that is, in the animal kingdom, we see two ray-shaped figures. The lower one appears in yellow and the upper one in green. This is intended to show that some of the beings in the initial zone of the terrestrial human being have especially pronounced feeling while others have especially pronounced intelligence.
      To the right of this, at the beginning of the next kingdom, we see these two figures overlapping one another. These overlapping fields are thus a mixture of the colours of feeling and intelligence and are intended to show that human consciousness at this point constitutes a harmonious balance between intelligence and feeling, which enables intuition to gain a foothold in the consciousness and cosmic consciousness to come about. These three coloured areas therefore define the three thought-climates described above: the climate of intelligence (green), the climate of feeling (yellow) and the climate of intellectuality (yellow-green). (See Sections 627, 630 and 637.)
      Cosmic consciousness is shown in the symbol by the lowest figure. Its domain appears between the two dotted lines that cut vertically through the figure. As one can see, it is present in all the zones of the spiral with the exception of the animal kingdom. Here it is totally outside the human being's day-consciousness. And therefore, in its animal-physical state, the being is "cosmically unconscious". At this point it is farthest away from the Godhead, from its own knowledge of its immortality and high identity as a son of God. This is why this zone is the true home of darkness, in other words of ignorance and suffering, indeed it constitutes the true night-time of the spiral's "cosmic 24-hour period".
      Thanks to the spiral cycle, however, after night comes the sunlit day. And so we see in the symbol that cosmic consciousness, indicated by the figure in question, moves from life's dark zone of night towards a culmination, which becomes the very highest peak of all conscious life. This peak represents the Godhead's own viewpoint. Here all sensory experience or creation is the very culmination of life. As the figure shows, the culmination takes place in the "divine world" itself, from where once again – on account of the beings' satiation with the light and its consequent hunger for the opposite – it decreases towards a "cosmic night" in the form of a new section in the animal kingdom. The spiral cycle thus divides eternity in a way into "cosmic 24-hour periods". In "Livets Bog" we have called these "24-hour periods" "spiral 24-hour periods". (See Sections 37 and 45.)
      As indicated by these sections or passages, these "spiral 24-hour periods" may also justifiably be divided into "cosmic hours", "minutes" and "seconds". And just as the purely physical 24-hour periods constitute links in larger spirals we call years, so too do the "spiral 24-hour periods" appear as links in larger cycles we can call "years". In principle these "spiral years" also have their "seasons". This is symbolised in the symbol by means of the figure with the slanting colours. This figure is divided by two horizontal lines, which go right across it, into three horizontal sections. By means of the perpendicular lines the figure is divided into several variously coloured panels. We can see that one of these panels appears with black* and white slanting stripes. It stretches from the line with the dark circle to the line with the half-dark circle. This expresses the time of year we call "winter".
      The next panel, which stretches from the half-dark circle to the next completely light circle and is coloured with green and white slanting lines, is intended to symbolise the season of "spring".
      From the light circular figure as far as the half-dark circular figure we find a section that is coloured with the whole spectrum of colours. This panel is intended to symbolise the season of "summer", while the one with brown** sections stretching from the half-dark to the completely dark circular figure expresses the season of "autumn".
      These four seasons in reality constitute merely the principles of the four states that recur in any cycle. A cycle is actually the same as a field of energy in which two equal contrasts arrive alternately at an equal manifestation, culmination and mutual mastery of each other. As a result there is for each contrast a section of the cycle in which it culminates and, in the same way for each, one in which it has its minimal manifestation. This is shown in the symbol by the white and black circular figure. There are two such culminations in the cycle of a physical year that we call a "solstice". There are two contrasts in every cycle and consequently also two "solstices". In the cycle of the physical year where the two contrasts constitute "summer" and "winter" (or more precisely, heat and cold), we call these "solstices" respectively the "summer solstice" and the "winter solstice".
      But, as we can see from the symbol, at a certain point midway between these two extremes, the two contrasts will have to be equally matched. And we call this point or stage in the cycle of the physical year an "equinox". The stage when winter, or the dark contrast, has diminished and summer, or the light contrast, has increased to the extent that both contrasts have become equal we term the "vernal equinox". The stage when the opposite is the case and it is the light contrast, or summer, that has diminished and the dark contrast, or winter, has increased to such an extent that they are passing the point where they are equally balanced, we call the "autumnal equinox". Both equinoxes are marked in the symbol by the two half-dark circular figures.
      As the symbol shows, the spiral with its six basic energies constitutes in reality a vast "winter" and "summer" and thus expresses a principle analogous to the physical year. The same applies to the 24-hours of an ordinary day. Here too we have the cycle with its principle of "summer" and "winter", "spring" and "autumn", just as we meet it also in the cycle of our own physical terrestrial lives.
      The symbol indicates that the spiral cycle's "winter solstice" appears at the culmination of the animal kingdom, while its "vernal equinox" appears at the boundary between the "real human kingdom" and the "kingdom of wisdom". In other words, the zone of the spiral cycle's winter stretches from the animal kingdom through the "real human kingdom" to the boundary of the "kingdom of wisdom". As the terrestrial human still finds itself in the animal kingdom, its location is in the spiral cycle's winter zone, that is, in the culmination of darkness. It is hardly surprising that life here with its wars, mutilations and unhappy fates has been expressed as "hell" or the regions of death. The radiant flourishing of true life cannot manifest here. Here exists only the desolate, sterile and stunted life conditions of winter. Here in comparison with true life, the beings live in the icy wastes of the polar night.
      It cannot be denied that the zones of the highest true life must be profusely abundant when one sees that the "real human kingdom" – located as it is on higher planets or worlds of great beauty, illuminated simultaneously by several multicoloured suns, where, for example, no shot has been fired for thousands of years or any lethal attack made on any living being, and furthermore, for a similar length of time, no one has eaten any meat or coarse animal food, nor indeed relished any rough vegetarian food like roots, leaves and stalks, but instead the Earth's yield of the most delicious fruit flesh and finest juices has been lavished upon them, while at the same time the "killing principle" has been removed in almost all respects from all areas of the continents and the population consists of geniuses, creating an atmosphere of art, love and joy – is considered as merely the first faint, spring-like signs of true life. And, this being the case, what will life be like in the divine spheres that are even higher?
      The "spring" of the spiral cycle extends from the "vernal equinox" to the "summer solstice". It comprises the "kingdom of wisdom" and the first half of the "divine world". The cosmic forms of life that manifest here will to a great extent lie just as high above the life forms we have just mentioned as the physical springtime lies above winter's icy desolation. At this point the heavy physical forms of existence are already on the decline and the beings' incarnations or rebirths now take place only in mental matter. Here their bodies begin to consist simply of moods and feelings. "Direct" correspondence between beings is now becoming universal, thus replacing the primitive, troublesome "indirect" method of communication through "language", "speech" and "writing" that they have until now been dependent on. Here the beings' slightest wishes become visible in matter with the same degree of luminous resplendence and strength as the beings have artistic ingenuity, power of thought and imagination with which to manifest their wishes. But it is not only the ingenious power to create in purely artistic sensitive colouring that is strongly developed here; we are at the same time in the zone that is the domain of intelligence itself, where every kind of manifestation concerning intelligence is therefore at its culmination. In luminous and radiant matter we see this cosmic spring zone's emerging life as a radiant revelation of what can be manifested through the being's very highest faculty of intelligence.
      What particularly dominates this plane of existence is the analyses of the universe, not set down on paper or found in books lying on shelves or racks in libraries but, on the contrary, appearing as moving, coloured, real figures, maintained in divine materials according to the will and wish of their originator.
      Similarly we see models of future inventions in physical worlds appearing with animated functioning. Indeed, we are confronted with an ocean of models of technical and mechanical apparatuses, machines, means of transport, building complexes, factory plants, harbour works etc. Furthermore there are such things as clothes, shoes, hats, furniture, decorations and many more examples. And even so, this is just the lowest level of this zone's manifestation of intelligence. On the higher levels we see not only models of future civilisations and communities of beings, but also actual models of new kinds of beings that are to come, hitherto undreamed of types, both human and animal, and new kinds of plants, all of which constitute realities that later will be put to use and brought to life in flesh and blood in physical worlds. Indeed, everything here is teeming with function and activity, but everything exhibits genius; everything is alive; everything is perfect. Here we are in the Godhead's own "design studio" or "model workshop". Here are the first seeds or shoots of all future revelations, shoots that will later grow and fertilise and populate future globes and worlds, beautifying and glorifying life for unimaginable centuries of time, for eternity. Here we are in the absolutely highest "springtime" of life.
      From the "summer solstice" to the "equinox", the symbol shows a section coloured with all the basic colours of the spectrum. This section symbolises the season we call "summer".
      In the spiral cycle this section stretches from the culmination of the "divine world", through the "kingdom of bliss" to the boundary between it and the "kingdom of instinct" or "plant kingdom", which is the first zone of the new spiral or a new cycle.
      It is a matter of course that the principle of summer here in the highest part of the cycle arrives at a manifestation or expression that surpasses absolutely everything that can be imagined, grasped or sensed in physical matter. But what can be documented is that here we find ourselves at the very culmination of the experience of life. In other words, the perfection, the harmony, the creation and the experience displayed here cannot be exceeded in any way whatsoever. We are on the very highest summit of life itself. Here there is nothing "higher". We are in the highest region of all. Anything that does not belong to this zone must have its place "lower down". We are in a sphere of such a high level of consciousness that we are at the limits of what can be wished for in the way of perfection, harmony, genius and creative power. In the mentality of the beings here there can therefore arise no wishes whatsoever that are higher. As a result, every wish, providing it does not belong to this sphere, will be of a lower kind and represent something that can be fulfilled only on a more primitive plane. It would be just as impossible to reach any higher in mentality and experience here in the spiral's summertime as it would be to attain a higher culmination or unfolding of life in the physical year's cycle than that which takes place during the cycle's summer. No life can reach a higher point than the display of summertime. Just as the physical display of summer is dependent on a harmonious interaction between the sun's warmth and the winter's cold, so the cosmic spiral's summer is also a harmonious interaction between the two great contrasts of light and darkness in the consciousness or mentality. This interaction is the summer's culminating physical profusion of flowers and wealth of colour transferred to intellectual ability. The atmosphere of the beings here constitutes the mystical silhouettes of trees, rooftops, towers and spires against the light sky of a clear summer night. The revelation of their being is the calm, sunlit sea by the white shores on a summer day. It is the dawning summer morning's fresh, pure air with dewdrops glittering on the flowers, leaves and branches. It is the shimmering of the warm sun as it plays with the shape of the horizon in the noontime heat of a summer day. It is the golden glow of an evening sky out over the sea. And it is the gleam of a silvery moon over the lake at the quiet midnight hour in summertime. Everything that caresses and brings light, warmth and strength during summertime is in principle identical to, or symbolises, the "divine world's" embracing of the living being. Its light is mental culmination. And this culmination is love. Love is thus the golden summer sun of mentality. Physical summertime is a radiant reflection of the glory of the celestial kingdom. It is the culmination of the permeation of the physical plane by the atmosphere of God. Summertime is "the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters". It is the presence of God in Nature, in mentality and in creation.
      But after a culmination or highest manifestation there comes a relaxation. After such an extensive fulfilment of all highest wishes and desires, a corresponding satiation with them is just as inevitable. The strong outward display now begins to decline and "wither". The spiral cycle's "autumn" begins to set in.
      This zone is illustrated in the symbol by the panel with the brown** slanting lines and stretches from the "autumnal equinox" to the "winter solstice". That is to say, as the symbol shows, it extends from the beginning of the "kingdom of instinct" to the culmination of the "kingdom of gravity". This culmination is the same as the "winter solstice". The fundamental factor of consciousness in this zone is, as in the previous cosmic "seasons", to a large extent the previous zone's basic energy, which in this case means the "energy of memory".
      With the commencement of this great satiation the being begins to lose interest in the outer current world and seeks its contrast. But the being will be quite unable to find such a contrast, in the purely outward sense, as long as it is in the "divine world". The only way it has of finding and experiencing such a contrast is through its "faculty of memory". By this means, it is able to get in touch with memories from its former experience of the animal zone in the spiral cycle. As we know from previous descriptions in "Livets Bog", these remembered experiences do not constitute any kind of real killing in the outward sense, but appear here in a beautifully purified state, for which reason we have named them "gold copies". But as they constitute details from a previous part of the spiral cycle and can therefore exist only in the "divine world" as memories or "gold copies", they therefore become an "inner experience" in that world. But the more the being becomes satiated with the harmony and perfection of the "divine world", the more there grows a longing for the contrast to its "outer experience", and for this reason it has, to a correspondingly increasing degree, to seek inwards in its world of memories. But the more it concentrates inwards on its "inner world", the quieter and less active becomes its outward, visible manifestation or appearance. And it is this declining interest in the "outside world" that, when seen from the same outward aspect, inevitably gives the impression that it is "dying". This turning of the mentality from the "outer" to the "inner world" we call "withering". And we actually witness this turning every autumn in Nature itself. It takes place to a great extent in the plant kingdom. The withering of the foliage and leaves in the autumn is really the same as the trees and plants turning their consciousness from the outer, physical world inwards towards their "inner world". And what we see here is the existence of a higher spiritual or cosmic principle replicated in a purely physical, visible form. What we call "autumn" is thus a stage in a cycle or a cosmic principle that, like the other "seasons", repeats itself in all existing forms of life experience.
      This "introspective" existence, where the being lives more and more within its own memories, is also an abundantly radiant existence, even though it presents itself outwardly as a world of quietude or "death". As we have just mentioned, these memories appear as "gold copies", which indicates that these previous experiences, all of which – when compared to the being's present stage in the cycle – are primitive, are now seen in a brilliant light as the necessary links in the cycle that they are and as totally essential for the being's perfect existence and thereby for the possibility of all life experience. Such a view of the previous experiences therefore differs from the original view in that whereas the original view was purely physical or illusory and expressed the events as "unhappy", as "unjust", as a "punishment" from wrathful gods or Providence, as "death" or extinction of life, as "hell" or suchlike, the "gold-copied" view consists of things seen with clear cosmic vision, appearing as intense enjoyment, since the being finds itself abundantly satiated with the contrast to the "gold-copied" view. So "gold copies" are a temporary satisfaction of an incipient hunger for the opposite of the abundant perfection of the divine world, which the being in question has become satiated with. The being looks upon the "gold copies" as a hungry person looks upon his favourite meal. A "gold copy" is the same as a hungry being's clear cosmic view of a memory that expresses the kind of manifestation that alone can satisfy that being's most predominant mental hunger. It is a matter of course that such a view is more alluring or welcoming than a view of things of which the being is already abundantly tired.
      Since after the culminating satiation with the "divine world's" lavishly radiant ingeniousness in beauty, artistry and perfection, the being turns its gaze towards its own previous outer, physical world, which, in that part of the spiral cycle where the being now is, can exist only as a world of memories, that is to say, an "inner world", this "inner world" now appears, on account of the being's hunger, as a lavish, intensified pleasure. It is this intensified pleasure in life experience that we call "bliss". "Bliss" is thus the same as the experience of "gold copies". And that part of the spiral cycle where the being's daily existence is maintained by this experience is known to us in "Livets Bog" as the "kingdom of bliss".
      But the being cannot continue to find satisfaction in the world of memories. What has once been experienced will soon once again become worn out. But this state of being worn out creates life and development in the being's talent kernels from the previous spiral, which is where the experiences originated that are now "gold copies", in other words, in that spiral's plant and animal kingdoms. And with this life or this growth in the talent kernels the energies of the being's consciousness begin to radiate outwards. The effects of its hunger and desire begin to be visible in the "outer world" that, during its introspective state of consciousness, had gradually become a "withered", "wasted" or "moribund zone".
      As shown in the symbol, it is these visible effects that in the cosmic cycle constitute the "kingdom of instinct" and the first half of the "kingdom of gravity", which are respectively the "plant kingdom" and the "animal kingdom". In relation to the manifestations of the "divine world", these forms of manifestation of consciousness can be likened only to the "mineral kingdom's" phenomena in the year cycle. Even the most outstandingly ingenious forms of killing in the "animal kingdom", and thereby in the terrestrial human being, can be considered only as the formation of crystals or ice flowers on our windows, when compared to the forms of manifestation or creation of life that take place in the "divine world". The next section in the cosmic cycle will therefore be considered to be autumn's first fragile tendencies towards bud formation and other preparations for the new springtime further ahead in the cycle. But as long as the manifestations from the "divine world" have not yet faded entirely away in the being's mentality, it will still have an outer coating of some of the light and glorious colouring of that world. It is these residual or dying traces of the "divine world" that, in the cosmic cycle, give this zone its stamp of "autumn", in the same way that the withering blossoms, foliage and late summer flowers are autumn's colouring in the cycle of the physical year. But when the traces of this previously so glorious world no longer dominate the being's consciousness, all that remains in the being's consciousness are the aforementioned beginnings of very tender germination and elementary "preparations for spring". Autumn no longer exists. But as this world of tender germination possesses as yet only a very small degree of outward power of creation or manifestation, we have come to that barren and desolate section in the spiral called "winter". "Winter" is therefore a section in the cycle where the very first elementary beginnings of outer manifestation dominate existence. In the cycle of the physical year this elementary manifestation is best known to us as the manifestations of cold, ice and snow, which in turn correspond to the advanced forms of expression in the mineral kingdom. In the cosmic cycle, this region of cold is the same as the zone of terrestrial human beings and the "real human kingdom". The activity that is released from these zones is thus nothing other than the activity in the cosmic cycle that takes place between the solstice and the vernal equinox in the cycle of the physical year, in other words, the activity that stretches from the frost and cold until the first shoots of snowdrops or other early spring flowers that peep up through the snow. And we have now come back once again to the "winter section" of the spiral cycle.
      We have now seen the four seasons of the year playing a role in the cosmic spiral cycle. We have witnessed that each individual cycle in the spiral cycle in fact constitutes the same four principles as the physical year, and for this reason we have termed it in "Livets Bog" a "spiral year".
 
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* The slanting stripes are described as grey in "The Eternal World Picture", book 2.
** The slanting stripes are described as red in "The Eternal World Picture", book 2.