17.20  The bottom coloured figure that stretches all the way from the left to the right of the symbol indicates merely the culmination of darkness and the culmination of light. Where this figure is thinnest we have the culmination of darkness or of the winter epoch. And where this figure is thickest we have the culmination of the summer epoch. As previously mentioned, this is also shown respectively by the black areas that are widest at the winter solstice figures, and the white area that is widest at the summer solstice figure. As we will see later, the primary consciousness of life or the Godhead exists where the bottom coloured figure is widest, just as the secondary consciousness of life or the Godhead exists where the figure is thinnest. From the colours we can see which kingdoms constitute the capacity of the secondary consciousness, and which kingdoms constitute the capacity of the primary consciousness. These two capacities of consciousness are unwaveringly constant. They are maintained by the passage of the living beings through them. The secondary consciousness of the Godhead is borne by the beings in the plant kingdom and by the beings in the animal kingdom, to which the unfinished, terrestrial human belongs. After that comes God's primary consciousness. It is borne by the beings in the totally perfect human kingdom, the beings in the kingdom of wisdom, the beings in the divine world and the beings in the kingdom of bliss. The latter constitute the Godhead's memory. So these kingdoms of the spiral cycle are eternal stages of consciousness in the consciousness of the Godhead. These kingdoms are maintained by the eternal passage of the beings through the spiral cycles. By means of this passage both the Godhead and the living beings each get their eternal ability to experience life renewed and maintained. This passage through the cycles is maintained by the "principle of hunger and satiation". Eternally the beings hunger for and aspire to the opposite of what they are satiated with. No being whatsoever can go on enjoying the same thing without becoming satiated by this thing. Satiation gives rise to hunger for or interest in a new thing, and so on continuously. And on this principle is based the entire passage through the cycle, and thereby all experience of life. The living beings' experience of life is thus a passage through the eternal cosmic spiral cycles. This passage consists of alternating epochs of hunger and satiation. Terrestrial mankind is thus at the moment at the beginning of the epoch in which it hungers for light. It becomes increasingly satiated with darkness – war, illness and suffering. It begins to hunger for neighbourly love; it hungers for truly lasting peace on Earth; it hungers for a higher form of existence than the animal or killing form under which it now sighs and groans so very much. And this increasing satiation with darkness will thus gradually lead people into the light epoch of the spiral cycle, into its summer epoch, into the highest worlds, into the primary consciousness of God. So here they constitute those highest beings of peace, wisdom, love and creation that are God's instruments for the manifestation of his primary consciousness. But living in an unwavering pure cultivation of life's very highest, brilliant light, pleasure and wellbeing for time immemorial cannot but create satiation. Satiation creates in turn a longing for the opposite. And the opposite of light is darkness. The beings in the very highest worlds are, by means of this increasing satiation with light and their hunger for darkness, to a corresponding degree led out of the highest worlds and into the world of darkness on the physical plane. Here they will again become satiated with darkness, and will hunger for light, and will be led by this hunger into the worlds of light again, and so on continuously in all eternity. Without this alternating state there could exist no eternal experience of life whatsoever, and therefore no eternal life, neither for the Godhead nor for the living being. And from such a satiation with light in the highest worlds and by virtue of the ensuing hunger for darkness or the contrast to light, all existing life on Earth has been incarnated in the earth's physical area in order to become satiated with the darkness here and to feel again a longing for light, and by that means return to this light, and so on continuously.