The world appears as a division/reflection of the Infinite Indivisible One. There appears to be the opposites 'alive' and 'not alive', 'conscious' and 'not conscious'. It is as though the Primordial Pure Conscious Being split in two, to show what it is and what it isn't. This is a play of separation, of reflection and contrast, an expression of the inexpressible Infinite One by means of its opposites.
The world doesn't have a beginning or an end, only an appearance of beginnings and ends. The truth is Infinity, and limitations can only be illusory or imaginary. It's much like a dream. In a dream there is you, other people or animals, and the world in which the dream happens. But it is all the dreamer. The dream seems to split into you and a world. But really there is no splitting, and the division is imagined.
Back to the real world. Well, it's not really real. It's an expression of the Real. Nevertheless, there is a realness about this world. The realness is the Consciousness in which it appears. The world appears to have a contrast of conscious beings and non-conscious objects, alive beings and not-alive objects. This all appears within Consciousness. Consciousness is Life itself. It allows the appearance of opposites within its indivisible infinite oneness.
In this planet apparently non-living forms (elements etc.) have combined and interacted. They've been called the building blocks of life. It seems that these buildings blocks have combined and interacted to an extent that living conscious beings have been formed, namely animals and humans. There is a path of evolution from barely animate, to animated, to intelligently animated, or as we call them, alive and conscious beings. This sense of difference of what is alive and not-alive seems quite obvious to us, but if you look closely it's difficult to find the divide. The reason for this is that there is no divide between alive and not-alive. There is only Life.
This seeming dichotomy of Life into alive and not-alive cannot be perceived without the permanent Life that you are. This flow of alive and not-alive appears within the absolute life of Consciousness. It is by Consciousness that it is perceived, and it is in Consciousness, made of Consciousness.
It's worth mentioning here that it's not that the elements and forms come to life and become conscious beings. Really, life and consciousness is timelessly here. The life that the human body has is Consciousness. The consciousness that the human body seems to have is this Consciousness that is the background to the appearance of the world. Imagine Consciousness like a perfect sheet of paper, then different creatures are drawn on the paper. The real substance of the creatures is the underlying paper. The drawn beings don't come to life, yet at the heart of their being there is pure Life. This pure Life is expressed in the world of opposites as a coming and going, a rising and falling, what we call 'coming to life' and 'losing life'. It is all Pure Life expressed through a world of opposites.
It is the same Consciousness that is the heart and life of all beings. The beings/creatures/humans/animals are like pockets of perception in the world. These pockets of perception are the means by which Infinite Consciousness perceives the expression of itself. Like the dream analogy, the world is Infinite Consciousness perceiving itself through the illusory separation of the subject perceiving objects. For example, your human self perceiving the world around it is really Infinite Consciousness appearing to separate into the human and the world it perceives. It's all One. There is no beginning or end to the world. It is Infinite Consciousness.