The question arises whether Spirit and Matter are the sole principles of creation, or whether there are other intervening principles or planes of existence. In the prior post we established that Matter is not the sole, nor the primary, principle of creation. The question now is whether Mind and Life, which we see at work in the material world, can be created out of Matter, or whether they must originate elsewhere. Sri Aurobindo points out that: “…the difficulty here is that Mind and Life are too different from Matter to be products of Matter; Matter itself is a product of Energy, and mind and life must be regarded as superior products of the same Energy. If we admit the existence of a cosmic Spirit, the Energy must be spiritual; life and mind must be independent products of a spiritual energy and themselves powers of manifestation of the Spirit. It then becomes irrational to suppose that Spirit and Matter alone exist, that they are the two confronting realities and that Matter is the sole possible basis of the manifestation of Spirit; the idea of a sole material world becomes immediately untenable. Spirit must be capable of basing its manifestation on the Mind principle or on the Life principle and not only on the principle of Matter; there can then be and logically there should be worlds of Mind and worlds of Life; there may even be worlds founded on a subtler and more plastic, more conscious principle of Matter.”
Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Book 2, Part 2, Chapter 21, The Order of the Worlds
Sri Aurobindo Studies 