The question "Are inanimate things included in the infinite life?" must answer itself, if you take one of the meanings of this term as being the Great, the All. As a matter of fact, however, science now knows that there are no inanimate things. Its high-power microscopes reveal the presence of minute living cells in materials and substances and liquids which are seemingly dead, and its sensitive electrical instruments reveal the presence of energies in others, such as steel. In the end we have to come back to the basic idea that the universal existence is like (but is not actually) a dream inasmuch as it is all a series of mental experiences projected from one's own mind. And because even the inanimate things such as tables and houses which a dreamer sees are really his ideas--that is, reflections of his own mind and therefore of his own life-energy--consequently they are not really dead things. So too for the mountains and rivers in God's dream. From this standpoint there is no such thing as death, only life. But of course the life of a limited world is poetically like death when compared to the life of the divine world.
-- Notebooks Category 26: World-Idea > Chapter 1 : Divine Order of The Universe > # 202
