38.14  The step second from the bottom in the symbol symbolises the part of the animal kingdom where the terrestrial human being is. To a certain degree this being still belongs to the animal kingdom, just as it has also evolved to varying degrees as a human being. The orange colour symbolises the animal aspect of the being, while the yellow colour symbolises the humane aspect of the same being. Vegetarian nutrition consists too of life units. But these life units belong to the plant kingdom in the micro-spiral, while the animal life units belong to the animal kingdom. Since the plant life unit has no awake day-consciousness on the physical plane over and above a faculty for vague sensing, it cannot directly feel pain or suffering. It can only vaguely sense pleasantness and unpleasantness. It can even in certain cases, because of its long, previous state of bliss, have a vague sense of pleasure when its outer organism is injured. We see here that the plant life unit, with its painless existence, is far better suited as food for people than animal nutrition. Since the vegetable life units have their day-consciousness mainly on the spiritual plane, and not on the physical plane where the animal life unit has its day-consciousness, they cannot meet with any conscious, physical death or suffering in the absolute sense by being absorbed as nourishment in an organism. And we have here the food definitely intended for the most highly evolved beings on the physical plane of the Earth.
      The case of the animal life units is different. As will be remembered from the above, they belong to the animal kingdom and the unfinished human kingdom of their spiral cycle in precisely the same way as the unfinished human being in whom they are microbeings. When these small microbeings or life units in the form of animal food are digested as food in the organism, their physical organism is dismembered and decomposed. They experience an unnatural death, an Armageddon, on undergoing the carnivore's digestive process with its gastric acid. The organism of these small beings consists also of microbeings, whose organisms in turn consist of microbeings. These animal life units are all killed by the process of digestion, with the exception of the life units that are so little evolved that they are still spiritual in nature. We have indicated these life units as the red particles and as the rightful food for human beings. These life units have no physical organism over and above the aura of force that is concentrated around them. These life units constitute the real nutrition in both animal and vegetable food, through which the carnivorous and herbivorous beings nourish their organisms and keep them alive. When animal food is digested, the higher life units, which in the symbol are symbolised by the organisms of the yellow and green particles or life units, are, as previously mentioned, killed by the gastric acid. The red particles or nutritional life units are thereby liberated, and they incarnate now with their aura of force in the organism of the carnivorous being as nutrition, which renews and maintains the strength of the organism. The organisms of the yellow and the green life units, which now through digestion have become corpses, are evacuated from the carnivorous being's organism as excrement.