38.13  Animal food is symbolised on the bottom step of the symbol by the violet area with the yellow, green and red particles. We see that the red particles are gathered in the middle section. But this is not the case in reality. There they are evenly distributed between the other particles. We have drawn them in the symbol in this way only in order to direct attention more easily to them. All these coloured particles are in reality living beings in micro-form. And we have called these "life units". These life units here form the substance that we call animal substance. This substance is the most living substance that exists on the physical plane. The life units here, in animals as well as in human beings, are the most highly developed substance in the organs of the organism. This substance, that is animal matter, belongs to the animal kingdom of the micro-spiral concerned. The life units here experience life in a wakefully day-conscious way. They can feel pain and suffering, which they are particularly exposed to when they are digested as food in the organism of an animal or a human being. Here they are dismembered, crushed and dissolved in gastric acid so that the nutrition in the substance can be transferred to the animal or human being in question in whose organism they are digested as food. This form of nutrition is the most primitive, the coarsest and the most brutal that exists, since it can consist of nothing other than killed or murdered living beings. That they are microbeings does not change the law of karma, which determines that the fate we inflict upon other beings inevitably becomes our own, whether it be evil or good.