673. Such characteristics of the existence of the I behind all manifestations of energy are answers of a different kind than answers in terms of weights and measures. Here in "Livets Bog" we call these answers "expressions of life". And this brings us to the last and final analysis of combinations of energy or types of movement. Whereas an answer in terms of weights and measures expresses only a numerical sum and thereby expresses only something that has no life, answers in terms of expressions of life express some form of revelation of planning or purpose and consequently functioning of will and thought, thereby proving life to be a fact. Since all forms of manifestation of energy, regardless of size, reveal themselves to the advanced researcher as being unable to exist without being identical to such an "expression of life", or at the very least without constituting some link or other in a larger plan or purposeful creation, then everything we come into contact with or can possibly come into contact with in the way of energies – whether it be the forces of Nature or the living beings as we commonly understand them, whether it be the almost imperceptible speck of dust that falls seemingly by chance on our furniture or the winter's cold or the summer's warmth, the ocean's breakers, the howling of the storm, the rumbling of the thunder or the shining of the sun and so on – all these become unmistakable characteristics of life. These phenomena all constitute "expressions of life". Over the ages the forces of Nature have completed the plan or logical creation that is revealed today in the existence of living beings. From being invisible, spiritual energies, rays and waves, these forces have been transformed to the stage of being fire and from there to the stage at which they are cooling down, where we now find the current multiplicity of colossal, perfect and purposeful organisms, not only in flesh and blood but also in iron and steel. As it has thus become a fact that in the long run the forces of Nature, as we have already said, have revealed such a process of transformation, it cannot be denied that they are logical and thereby an expression of will and thinking, thus making them equally firm "expressions of life".
      But "expressions of life" are the same as indications of consciousness, which are in turn the same as a form of speech or correspondence. But if Nature is thus an indication of consciousness or speech, this means that behind Nature there is a "something" or an "I" that manifests itself through Nature, in the same way that our own I manifests itself through our organism; in other words, Nature is also a "living being".