be _in_ it, in some way--must be the _essence_ of it. Granting this, we
must then think that everything must be filled with the essence of
Life, for Life must be one of the qualities of the Absolute, or rather
what we call Life must be the outward expression of the essential Being
of the Absolute. And if this be so, then it would follow that
_everything in the Universe must be Alive_. The mind cannot escape this
conclusion. And if the facts do not bear out this conclusion then we
must be forced to admit that the entire basic theory of the Absolute
and its emanations must fall, and be considered as an error. No chain
is stronger than its weakest link, and if this link be too weak to bear
the weight of the facts of the universe, then must the chain be
discarded as imperfect and useless, and another substituted. This fact
is not generally mentioned by those speaking and writing of All being
One, or an emanation of the One, but it must be considered and met. If
there is a single thing in the Universe that is
"dead"--non-living--lifeless--then the theory must fall. If a thing is
non-living, then the essence of the Absolute cannot be in it--it must
be alien and foreign to the Absolute, and in that case the Absolute
cannot be Absolute for there is something outside of itself. And so it
becomes of the greatest importance to examine into the evidences of the
presence of Life in all things, organic or inorganic. The evidence is
at hand--let us examine it.

The ancient occultists of all peoples always taught that the Universe
was Alive--that there was Life in everything--that there was nothing
dead in Nature--that Death meant simply a change in form in the
material of the dead bodies. They taught that Life, in varying degrees
of manifestation and expression, was present in everything and object,
even down to the hardest mineral form, and the atoms composing that
form.