648. These two examples have therefore shown us that there are aspects of terrestrial human beings' nature that neither "seduction" nor "education" can alter. Obviously, there is very much more to say about these things, just as there is an entire Eldorado of verifiable realities to be found in daily life that do not belong to the terrestrial life cycle but appear exclusively as steps in a higher cycle. But these realities belong to later analyses in "Livets Bog". Here we have merely touched on these phenomena simply to show that the cycle of a terrestrial life reveals many realities of such dimensions that their emergence has required a span of time far greater than that represented by a single "terrestrial life cycle". These realities, which prove neither to have begun nor to have been completed in a single terrestrial life cycle, stand as incontestable proof that the living, physical being must survive the "autumn" of its terrestrial life (its old age) and must enter into a new "winter" (childhood) zone, and from here begins a new terrestrial life cycle in which the realities in question must reach yet another section in their progress towards the completion of their evolution.
      The physical, animal type of living being must therefore, in the "autumn" of its terrestrial life cycle, lose quite a number of the realities that belong to the single terrestrial life cycle, that is to say those realities whose cycles do not span greater distances than they had been able to complete in a single terrestrial life. That which is taken with them into the new cycle constitutes only what could not reach its conclusion or the completion of its cycle in the span of a single terrestrial life. Just as beeches and many other trees lose their leaves in autumn because their cycle has been brought to completion, but take their trunk and roots with them over into a new cycle and acquire in a new springtime another splendid crown of foliage, so too must the animal type of being in the "autumn" of its terrestrial life cycle lose its "crown of foliage", that is to say its physical body – for this has come to the end of its cycle – and take only its "roots" and "trunk", that is to say its fate element and level of consciousness, over into a new terrestrial life cycle because these two phenomena represent cycles whose appearance before and after the birth and existence of the physical body is just as necessary as the roots and trunk of a deciduous tree are necessary before and after the burgeoning of the leafy crown, if this is going to be able to exist at all and be renewed every springtime.
      The animal type of being therefore also has, like the plant being, its "leafless trunk" and "winter state", which in its own way can be observed on the physical plane by the advanced researcher. What we call "old age" is thus merely the withering and falling of the "beech tree's foliage", as a result of autumn storms and the start of winter night frost, transferred to the plant being's cycle of the animal stage. What we call "death" is only winter's snowstorm and frosty ice crystals lighting up the leafless branches during the restfulness of a winter's night.
      But under the peace of this white covering, inside the tree's roots and trunk, sap and material substances are working towards the creation of a "new spring". The fate element and the talent kernels aspire with unfailing certainty towards the manifestation of the fount of creativity of a new physical life. And behold, one fine day the silent trunk's leafless branches are covered with a splendid new crown of foliage, and again far off the cuckoo is calling, spring sunshine is glittering on the quiet, woodland lake and high in the sky the lark is singing above green fields. At God's eternal bidding – "Let there be light" – the "dead" son of God appears resurrected in a new physical terrestrial life. "Winter", "death" and "rest" are over. Life has returned. The cycle continues. Through the new physical body of the resurrected son of God, God's spirit once again sparkles through time and space, out over worlds, suns and star cities.