are you familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's concept of "morphogenetic fields"?

it's not life exactly, more a pattern on the mind field

if you haven't got to the part in Apocalypse about gnostic cosmology it gives you some notion of what Sheldrake is talking about, and how you can talk about any form having a kind of life...

psychics often talk about the "aura" of things, this is what it is I believe, a mind field pattern