38.16  The next step upwards in the symbol symbolises plant nutrition or vegetable food. With the transition to this diet the beings gradually become entirely free of the killing principle as regards nutrition. The step belongs to some degree to the animal kingdom and to some degree to the human kingdom, which is symbolised by the orange-coloured section, indicating the animal side of the human being, and the yellow colour, indicating the humane side of the human being. The step thus indicates the sphere of unfinished human beings. The round figure on the right of the step symbolises a plant life unit. As we see it differs from the meat life unit by not containing animal life units, that is those that are indicated by the yellow and the green colour. It thus contains only red life units or the spiritual substance that is absolutely the only substance that can nourish an organism. Only the pure fruit flesh around the seed in ripe fruit is, however, almost entirely free of substances that become waste products. Vegetable dietary substance includes not merely pure fruit flesh. It includes also the part of the vegetable diet that consists of roots, leaves and stalks, for example potatoes, carrots, lettuces and the like. Here the red life units are also encapsulated in substance that must be removed by digestion so that they can be liberated and become nourishment for the vegetarian or the herbivorous being. Since there are no animal life units in vegetable dietary substance, there is no real process of killing during the digestion of this substance. The life units of this substance do not have an awake day-consciousness or such a developed nervous system that they can consciously feel pain or suffering, as is the case with the animal life units. The latter belong, as we know, to the animal kingdom in their spiral cycle, while the vegetable life units belong to the plant kingdom in the same spiral cycle. In the main, plant life units are animated on the physical plane only by the energy of instinct, regardless of whether they are microcosmic, mesocosmic or macrocosmic in nature. A plant life unit can merely "sense vaguely" on the physical plane. Its other senses are not yet to the fore here. It can therefore experience only pleasantness and unpleasantness. It cannot experience realistic pain. The remaining part of its awake day-consciousness is still bound to the kingdom of bliss on the spiritual plane. This in turn means that, even though the organisms of the plant life units are injured and digested, no killing or suffering whatsoever in reality occurs here. Indeed, its organism being injured gives the still very undeveloped plant life unit a strong inkling of pleasure. Imagine how divine this arrangement is when one considers that there are no living beings' organisms whatsoever that meet such intense suffering and decomposition as plant organisms! The fact that the plant life unit to a certain degree experiences the injuring of its organism as a vague feeling of pleasure is due to its long stay in the light and bliss of the spiritual worlds. Over-satiation with this light and bliss has resulted in it being a pleasure for it to experience the opposite. And it is precisely in this direction that the plant is evolving for the moment.