In the explanation of Symbol no. 13 we experienced the living beings' passage of life experience through a cycle. We saw how the beings in such a cycle went through a culmination of darkness and a culmination of light. The beings' passage through the cycle was governed by a state of hunger and satiation promoted by the primordial desire. With the culminating experience of darkness satiation with this darkness arises and promotes hunger for the light. And with the culminating experience of the light satiation with the light arises and promotes hunger for the darkness. And because of the eternal existence of the basic primordial desire this leads the living being alternately through the culmination of darkness and light. The eternal life of the living being is an eternally changing experience of the culmination of a light epoch and a dark epoch. Every time a being has experienced a culminating satiation with the dark epoch and a corresponding satiation with the light epoch, it has passed through a cosmic spiral section or a spiral cycle. The basis of this experience is the primordial desire and the principle of hunger and satiation. Through this process of change the vital contrast principle is maintained. Without this principle all sensory perception would be quite impossible. These two contrasts must be present in every creation. But the way these two contrasts are combined in the creation is very important. If the darkness is in excess in the being's creation, sphere of thought and way of being, then this creation becomes correspondingly dark and killing. If the light is in excess in this creation, then it reduces to the same degree the creation of the life experience and so kills or diminishes the life experience. In order that the life experience, as well as any other creation, can be totally perfect, the light and the darkness of the creation must be in equilibrium. This holds true here just as it does in the production of a photograph. If this photograph is overexposed, which means that the light dominates so much that it more or less obliterates the shady parts of the picture, it is a correspondingly imperfect photograph. If the picture is underexposed, which means that the darkness dominates the picture so much that its light parts are more or less obliterated, then the picture is also correspondingly imperfect. If the picture, on the other hand, is produced so that the light and the darkness are so combined that they emphasise each other in such a way that they are neither stronger nor weaker in relation to one another than is the case in the object photographed, then the picture is absolutely perfect. In order that a being's unfoldment of consciousness, creation and way of being can be absolutely perfect, light and darkness must also here be so combined that the combination is that which is required to produce a culmination of the absolutely highest unfoldment of consciousness, manifestation or creation, which is the expression of absolute love, meaning that love by which one loves God above all things and one's neighbour as oneself, that love which is the fulfilment of all laws, that love which is one with God's primary consciousness, that love which makes the being one with God. Since the experience of life is thus based on the contrasts of light and darkness, then it is quite natural that the beings' eternal life must be a passage through the dark and light epochs of the spiral cycles. How else could they obtain knowledge of darkness and light and so become perfect? The spiral cycles are thus a great contributory factor in the creation of the living beings' eternal life experience.