16.11  This symbol in its entirety symbolises the living being.
      The white triangle in the middle symbolises this being's I, which is the fixed point in the midst of the emitted and returning movements.
      The white flaming cross indicates that the living beings' eternal body is always totally perfect. It is in its entirety eternally in balance. All apparent surfeits and deficits can be due only to a localised view of the phenomena around the eternal body, and they do not effect its entirety. By surfeits and deficits is meant inhibitions and intensifications that the unfinished being creates within its combinations of energies and movements. These inhibitions and intensifications when overdeveloped create an imbalance, which can produce war and strife, hatred and persecution and the like in the living being's life together and the resulting unhappy fate to their originators.
      The many violet coloured arcs or cyclic paths emanating from and returning to the I symbolise all the different kinds of movement, of which the living being's created organs, bodies, manifestations and life experience consist. As stated above all created phenomena move in cycles. Each of these cyclical paths or cycles in the symbol therefore symbolises the cycles of bodies and organs, as well as the cycles of manifestations and thoughts. All creation is movement. All created things are combinations of kinds of movement. All substance is composed of different kinds of movements. Everything is therefore movement. And as movement cannot go in a straight line, but must go in cycles back to its source and origin, then everything that is accessible to ordinary senses is in movement. This is the reason why everything is subject to transformation. Everything is moving in cycles around the I, which is the fixed point in relation to all movement.
      The greatest cycle that a living being can experience within a physical life on Earth is the experience of this terrestrial life. It is in itself a release of movement emanating from the I and returning to the I. But within this life on Earth it may experience or witness fragments of cycles of much greater dimensions. Its own present life on Earth is only a single, small detail of a gigantic cycle in which it finds itself, the cycle that we know as the "spiral cycle". In this symbol we show this cycle as a circular path emanating from the I and returning to it, repeated where the being again is led into a new spiral cycle, and so on continuously for all eternity. But there are even greater cycles, which we will return to in later explanations of other symbols. The cycles that we have mentioned up to now are all of such a nature that we can call them "slow-moving cycles". In contrast to these there are the daily "release of the will", manifestations and actions, that is the release of energies and movements in our daily life. Some of these have such short paths that their consequences come immediately or in the same hour, day, week, month or the same year. Other after-effects of daily life return only after several years, others again in the next life on Earth, or an even later life on Earth. When all cycles do not return equally quickly, it is of course due to the fact that the being in its way of life can produce the causes of these returning effects many times faster than the consequences can be made manifest. Therefore, the being will always be, so to say, well ahead in time regarding the release of actions in its way of life, from evil thoughts, hatred, persecution, murder and killing, as well as good thoughts, great humaneness or acts of charity, each of which can exist only as a retributive1 effect for its originator. Behind each unfinished terrestrial human being there is therefore a pile up of retributive effects that seek to be manifested as the fate of the being whenever suitable conditions permit. How many retributive effects are of an evil way of living, how many are of a good or loving way of living depends upon how much evil or good behaviour the being has manifested towards its surroundings. As a rule the retributive effects cannot be manifested as quickly as the causes of them are created, so there is a waiting time. In certain cases this waiting time for the retributive manifestations can be very long. Some human beings have a dark mass of consequences or fate accumulated from previous lives. Whenever a suitable state arises, some of this dark mass of consequences manifests itself. In some lives on Earth the being has no such state of fate to be manifested, just as in other lives on Earth the being is almost entirely subject to its dark retributive fate. We can therefore see human beings who apparently live as staid middle-class people in the community, perhaps even holding great posts and seeming to have great success in all that they undertake. They do not suffer from any illnesses, they have no financial difficulties and no other forms of inconvenience or unpleasantness. But one day the conditions may arise for the manifestation of the being's accumulated dark retribution or fate. This may come about because the individual is affected by war breaking out in his country. On account of his dark mass of retribution he can experience many sufferings, be mutilated or become an invalid. The apparently so harmless middle-class person may even be put in some dreadful concentration camp, where he, together with many others of the same status and fate, may languish to death under many forms of pain and terror. He may of course meet his fateful retribution in other ways, for example, through a long series of accidents, opposition and troubles, sorrows, illnesses that cause life-long disablement and pain, poverty, distress and misery. Later on, through special symbols about fate, we will explain how the being merely because of its meat-eating or the continuance of its nourishment from animal food, which causes death and horror to the millions of animals that have been murdered, slaughtered or killed and so deprived of their innate right to live, may be predestined to this type of dark fate. Here we must remind you of the great commandment given to mankind as the sixth commandment: "Thou shalt not kill". The only purpose of the dark retributive effects is to create the humaneness in the human being that causes it to no longer have the heart to kill and so dismiss the fatal superstition that the human being can live only on animal food and must therefore kill in order to live.
      Since human beings thus manifest not only "evil" or dark fate, but also manifest more or less "good" or bright fate, their behaviour is a mixture of "evil" and "good". In some periods the being may be in a bright state of fate, and in other periods he may be in a dark state of fate. And it will continue like this until the being no longer has the heart to do "evil" and has thus become a perfect being of light, a "human being in God's image, after His likeness".
      In this symbol we see that the cyclical paths represent four different sizes. This does not mean that the manifoldness of the paths of fate or cycles emanating in all directions from and returning to the I, exist only in four sizes. It merely indicates that the cycles are of different sizes. It must also be realised that the number of cycles shown in the symbol constitutes only a fraction of the number of cycles contained in every being's eternal body. When it is realised that the eternal body contains some cycles that are so small that their emanation and their return to the I take place within almost a second, while other cycles are of such gigantic dimensions that they span the entire spiral cycle from the kingdom of bliss and back to the kingdom of bliss again, then we have got some idea of the living being's dimension of eternity. This means that such a cycle, which is also an arc of fate, emanating from and returning to the I, spans millions and millions of years. Later we will return to those spiral cycles or arcs of fate that are even greater and a vital factor in the being's eternal existence. The eternal body thus shows us that the I is absolutely the only existing originator and the unshakable fixed point, from which all movements emanate and to which all movements return.