Dr. N.L. Kachhara
Scientists have been searching for extraterrestrial life, with little success so far. However, they anticipate the existence of many Earth-like planets in the universe where life must exist. The Jain scriptures state that life is flourishing all over the loka, but that animals and humans are found only in the middle loka. Out of the innumerable islands (cosmological structures) in the middle loka, human beings are found on 2½ islands and animals on all of the islands. Human beings are of different kinds; physiologically they are of two types, one like us and the other with animal faces.
Let us analyze the question of the existence of life from the point of view of the evolution process. The process of evolution depends on a large number of factors and is highly uncertain and probabilistic. When evolution takes place on a large number of planets, the diversity of the local conditions, the path evolution takes, and the dynamic state of the soul would determine to what stage evolution is able to proceed on each planet. Jains believe that on all but the 2½ islands where humans are found evolution proceeds to the stage of five-sense animals only. Variation is found in the size and shape of animals from planet to planet; for example, the farthest island, Swayambhuraman, has the largest fish. In the 2½ islands, human beings are found to vary in shape and size. Human beings of our type are found in only 3 regions of our Island, and 15 regions of the 2½ Islands; other regions have human beings with animal faces or some other combination of common human beings and animals. Such human beings are not expected to have speech or language abilities like ours and obviously must lack communication skills. Jain scriptures state that these human beings do not possess the six kinds of skills which we have and lead a forest-based life (Bhoga Bhumi). Does a civilization more advanced than ours exist elsewhere? In the spiritual sense, the answer is yes. We live in the Bharat Ksestra region of our Island. In the Videha region, at the centre of this Island, human civilization is said to be more spiritually advanced, and also, perhaps, more intelligent. They remain happy all the time, whereas the human beings in our region are said to have repeating cycles of happiness and unhappiness over a period of hundreds of thousands of years.
