The entire universe, everything that can be sensed or perceived, is, according to the highest occult analysis, living. But all life has two aspects, namely "the aspect of substance" and "the aspect of life". When we see something we call "substance" it is really something "living" we are seeing from "the aspect of substance". When we, however, see something we call "living" it is in reality the substance we are seeing from "the aspect of life". In this way substance and life become identical, but can be felt through two fundamentally different forms of sensory perception.
      As the ability to feel life from "the aspect of substance" constitutes the most primitive form of sensory perception it is common to all living beings at the primitive stages in evolution. The ability to sense substance from "the aspect of life" is, however, not fundamental until the higher steps in evolution where the beings have gone through the "great birth" mentioned in "Livets Bog". For beings who do not fundamentally sense life from "the aspect of life" but merely from "the aspect of substance" all life appears as "substance" or "matter". This matter is in turn identical to energy, power, movement or vibration. The vibrations represent in turn an endless world of variations appearing for the senses as colours, sounds, rays, and bodies; in brief as everything we know of as "created things". Since everything that can be sensed from "the aspect of substance" is movement or vibration, nothing from this aspect will be seen as eternal but only as changeable. Everything is therefore temporal. If one, however, senses from "the aspect of life", everything becomes life or "living beings". As one does not sense matter from this aspect "living beings" cannot appear here in forms or bodies nor show any signs of change, since the movement or vibrations cannot be sensed here. Living beings therefore reveal themselves as eternal realities, which means that they have never begun and will never cease. As these eternal realities constitute those points from which all vibration or movement emanates, they are the only absolute "fixed points" in existence. These eternal "fixed points" constitute the foundation for everything that can be sensed from "the aspect of substance"; they constitute the source of all creation; they constitute the eternal living kernel in every organism and determine that these organisms achieve identity as living beings. It is such a kernel of being we have come to know through "Livets Bog" as the "I". For occult sensory perception these "I's" or "fixed points" thus become the very highest and ultimate direct analysis of everything that can be sensed. As they constitute the life itself or "the living" in the universe we will call these points "life units". These "life units" can thus through primitive sensory perception be perceived only as "substance", but through the highest sensory perception this "substance" becomes visible as "life units".
      A "life-unit" thus constitutes the living being seen from "the aspect of life". The "life units" of which one has most knowledge on Earth are of course those constituting terrestrial human beings or those to which the individuals themselves belong. Next come the animals, then the plants and after them the minerals. While the primitive or terrestrial sensory perception to some degree indirectly elicits the view of human beings, animals and plants as "living beings", or as here termed, "life units", it is significantly more difficult through the same sensory perception to experience the minerals as "living beings" or "life units". These are, on the contrary, sensed more as substance, vibration or movement. But gradually, as the human being begins to be able to sense through "cosmic consciousness" or "the holy spirit", it becomes more and more evident that the materials or substances mentioned also constitute "life units". And it is on the basis of this evidence, which allows everything in existence to appear as "life units", that one can prove that it is not animal but vegetarian products that constitute the natural food for the human being, just as it is also from the same experience that one can show that cremation, as I have shown in another book, is flagrantly against the laws of Nature.