One issue that is inexplicable for most explanations of existence is the manifestation of consciousness in material forms. If we start from the original existent Sat-Chit-Ananda, we find that existence (Sat) implies forms and since Existence and Consciousness-Force (Chit) are co-existent, this implies that energy and consciousness are also implicit in forms as well. The Real-Idea resides inside the forms that have been consolidated through the action of Energy carrying out the will of Consciousness. Sri Aurobindo describes this when he states: “…design, quantity and number are powers of existence-substance, quality and property are powers of the consciousness and its force that reside in the existence; they can be made manifest and operative by a rhythm and process of substance. The growth of the tree out of the seed would be accounted for, like all other similar phenomena, by the indwelling presence of what we have called the Real-Idea; the Infinite’s self-perception of the significant form, the living body of its power of existence that has to emerge from its own self-compression in energy-substance, would be carried internally in the form of the seed, carried in the occult consciousness involved in that form, and would naturally evolve out of it.”
Based on this principle, we find that the infinitesimal building blocks of forms, whether we call it the seed, or go even further into the atomic world to call them chromosomes or genes, or even chemical elements and compounds, all carry the essence of that Real-Idea for whichever form they are intended to manifest and the development of the physical form also then implies the involved consciousness can manifest with it the psychological and energetic characteristics that are intended in that Real-Idea.
Matter is not purely unconscious or inanimate, but contains within it, the essence of consciousness and the impulsion of its intended manifestation. The hidden or occult consciousness creates forms that can support the manifestation of that consciousness over time, and as higher energies of consciousness have to manifest, they create ever more complex forms capable of holding and manifesting that consciousness.
reference: Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part I, Chapter 1, Indeterminates, Cosmic Determinations and the Indeterminable
Sri Aurobindo Studies 