804. But when the most outstanding and cleverest representatives of the "living beings" that are recognised by the authorities cannot even approach the ability or competence that Nature, or so-called "dead matter", reveals to us as an unshakable fact, it must indeed be an extraordinarily great advantage to be one of the "dead things". What does it mean to be a "dead thing" if one in this condition can manifest far greater intellectuality and creative capacity than if one were a "living thing"? Do you not think that it is the beings' view of life and death that is rather inadequate here? Why do they say that things that show greater intellectual capability and proficiency than they themselves do are "dead things"? There must be something that is the cause of the difference between the things that the beings feel compelled to define as "life" and "death". What is it that the beings see in themselves and their fellow beings, but do not see in Nature, that causes them in some way or other to consider the latter to be a "dead thing"? Could it not be that this view or perception is due to the fact that Nature's "inner world" still lies out of range of their ability to perceive. They are familiar with the fact that they themselves have such an "inner world" just as those who they perceive as fellow beings must also have one, because this is revealed in areas that they are to a certain extent able to observe with their physical senses. But Nature itself is the expression of an organism of such immensity that it extends far beyond the beings' physical sensory horizon. They are therefore completely unable to observe this organism as a whole. They see no limbs or organs. In fact, they are completely unable to see it as an "organism" for a being, and consequently are unable to recognise any "I" behind this collection of matter. They are therefore unable to judge Nature as a "living being". We thus easily understand what an enormous difference there must therefore be between the terrestrial human being's ordinary view of Nature, which is based on only the physical senses, and the same being's view of itself and what it commonly regards as its fellow beings. Whereas it can survey as a whole the lives of its fellow beings and can observe the way they interact with their surroundings, Nature is of such dimensions that it can see only so little of this enormous organism's functions that it simply becomes a collective body of matter that one must at best acknowledge or recognise as an expression of "movement", but that this "movement" in itself should be synonymous with "life" is something that can be recognised only once the stage has been reached where intellectuality begins to make itself evident. The fact that there should be I-consciousness behind this "life", and that Nature thus represents an "inner world" just like oneself and one's fellow beings, is something one is bound to consider to be impossible as long as one has not yet reached the aforementioned stage where intellectuality begins to be evident. In this situation one is bound to be inspired solely by the previously described view that regards Nature as an unconscious body of matter. Such a being can see that it and its fellow beings have an "inner world" from which they can direct their appearance in the "outer world" and he therefore acknowledges that it and its fellow beings are the only living beings in the universe. But regarding all the beings that are in another spiral cycle and that therefore appear in dimensions that are either too microcosmic or too macrocosmic for the being to be able to see anything other than their matter and their movement – and moreover so little of these two factors that it cannot catch even a glimpse of an expression of an "inner world" from which the outer phenomena are a reflection or are governed – the being's view of these micro- and macro-beings cannot be one that acknowledges them as "living fellow beings". This will therefore result exclusively in the traditional conviction about "dead matter", which is still so dominant in terrestrial human beings' view of everything that lies outside their own domain and the domain of those they recognise as their fellow beings and that they express with the meaningless term "Nature".
      The difference between living beings and Nature is thus that the living beings are recognised as having consciousness or "spirit", whereas Nature is wholly denied this divine phenomenon.