Once I understand that all Prakriti is one manifest universe, the rock and the dog and the human are all shapes in this one reality. Therefore, when a mass of molecules gets energised by something called “life”, some autogenous reactions are started within that mass. And this allows those molecules to form structures (tissues), extract energy from certain chemical reactions to power their own processes (tissues get energy from glucose, for instance), and continue to operate.
A “living” entity therefore appears to be a special type of machine.
It is commonly believed that “living creatures” have thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. My learning about Prakriti tells me that those things exist anyway, and they are part of the machinery which is each creature. There is no fundamental or conceptual difference between the “physical” portion of a living machine and the “mental” or “emotional” parts.
The only really living being, if I am forced to use this term, is Prakriti herself. All the so-called mortal or ordinary living beings like dogs or humans or amoeba are just shapes in her. They are a mass of molecules with a certain set of autogenous reactions happening within them — we call them “living” things. When the autogenous reactions get disturbed or decay sufficiently to stop, we call them “dead” things. “Life” as we call it is injected into “dead” matter in billions of shapes at the time of an event we call “birth”, and that same “life” stops being active at other times, which we call “death”.
Therefore, all beings are the same. Some are incidentally “alive” for some time, others, like dead bodies, were once “alive” but are no longer so, and a third category, like bricks and rocks, were never “alive”. This difference is incidental.
Life has no special sanctity. It is a set of reactions in a special set of molecules in some corners of Prakriti. Therefore, life per se is only as precious as a rainbow. In other words, it doesn’t happen everywhere, and when it happens it may look very beautiful, and it can’t be conjured up at will — it comes into being when Ma chooses, and goes away when she chooses.
The way I see life is that Ma got lazy and said that it’s easier to create self-sustaining shapes which can reproduce, find their own energy source, and keep undergoing changes (including the big changes called “birth” and “death”). The game of the ever-changing universe goes on, but “living” shapes imbue some corners of the universe with some more dynamism, richer patterns of change. More fun and colour. Ma got bored of making simpler machines, so she made more complex ones, ones which will have subtle layers like emotions, thoughts, visualisation, desires, and so on. We live our lives, and think of ourselves as big and important doers. Ma watches and laughs.