Dr. N.L. Kachhara
The four types of immobile beings namely earth body, water body, fire body and air body beings, most trees and grass etc. (autotrophic), celestial beings, infernal beings, migratory body and human beings in the 13th and 14th stages of spiritual development, called sayoga kevali (active omniscient) and ayoga kevali (silent omniscient) respectively, are supposed to have individual body. This means that these beings are the sole owner of their bodies; no other organisms share their bodies. Each individual body organism has actually three bodies, the physical body, and fiery body and karma body.
According to Jain philosophy the physical body of a normal human being (and animals) contains infinite number of nano and microorganisms. Scientific study also shows that there are a large number of bacteria, archaea, and viruses in the body of human beings and other animals. With spiritual advancement to the 12th stage, according to scriptures, most of the nano and microorganisms are destroyed and none of them is left in the body in the 13th stage, the stage of omniscience. It is perhaps for this reason that the physical body in the 13th and 14th stages is supposed to be individual body. Similarly, the body of a celestial being or an infernal being, or a migrating body, which are fluid type, do not contain nano organisms and so are called individual body.
Some bacteria are autotrophic and, like plants, obtain their food by photosynthesis. We know that photosynthesis requires the supply of solar radiations. The bodies of autotrophic plants and such bacteria cannot grow without sunlight.
So we have two types of individual body beings. In the first type we have human beings in the 13th and 14th stage of spiritual development, celestial beings, infernal beings, and migratory bodies. It is believed in Jain philosophy that the human beings in the 13th and 14th spiritual stages do not generally consume any nutritional food by mouth. So is the case with celestial beings, infernal beings and migratory beings. Such beings are therefore neither autotrophic nor heterotrophic. The second type of individual body beings are autotrophic plants and bacteria, they make their food with the help of sunlight. Limiting to the second type, we infer that sunlight is the individual body vargana, which develops their gross bodies. The human beings in the 13th and 14 spiritual stages, the celestial beings and infernal beings are though not autotrophic may yet use sunlight in some way that we do not know. If that happens then there is all the more reason to believe that they make use of individual body vargana, the sunlight, for their sustenance.
The bioelectricity, in the form of ahara vargana, responsible for growth and development of organisms is also found in plants. This means that autotrophic plants need two types of vargana for their growth; they need individual body vargana in addition to ahara vargana. Emission of bio photons is also found in plants. This confirms that plants have karma body.
The inference that individual body vargana is sunlight is of great scientific significance. It establishes a scale of equivalence between vargana and electromagnetic radiations. Sunlight is supposed to be made of photon, which is regarded, as a quantum of electromagnetic radiation, has zero rest mass, and energy equal to the product of the frequency of the radiation and Planck's constant. In some context the photon is regarded as an elementary particle. According to Jain philosophy the photon as individual body vargana contains infinite number of paramanus. So the paramanu's quantum energy in Jain philosophy is infinitely smaller than photon. The individual body vargana is the lowest order eight-touch vargana (leaving out the nil vargana). So, photon is (i) smallest eight-touch matter having a mass, howsoever small and (ii) subject of all the four fundamental forces including gravity. The four-touch lower order vargana are much smaller than photon and are not subject of any of the fundamental force.
