Philosophy In Jain Agams: Sthāvara (Five Immobile Beings): Animate or Inanimate (Living or Non-Living)

According to Sthānāṅga, all the five immobile beings are both – living and non- living.^[1] This means earth bodied etc. are both living and non­living beings.

Air: Animate or Inanimate (Living or Non-Living)

In Sthānāṅga, five kinds of non-sentient air-bodied beings are also mentioned:^[2]

1. Trampled - Air rising up when trampled under the foot and the like.
2. Blown out - Air blown out by bellows etc.
3. Squeezed - Air rising up while squeezing wet cloth.
4. Bodily air - Belching, exhaling, etc.
5. Coagulation - Flow of air caused by fanning etc.

These five kinds of air are non-living in the period of its genesis, but later adapting to newer modes it may become living also.^[3]

From this description of Sthānāṅga, the five immobile beings may be non-living also. On the basis of this statement, the status of electricity and water produced by the combination is still a question open for further analysis. The commentator deems sammūrchim as the air resulted from a fan's movement and accepts it as non living. The above discussions throw new light on the life and lifeless state of five immobile beings.^[4] When the lake becomes full up to the brim, a steady outflow of hot water takes place from it. From the presented context it becomes clear that the water is both sacitta (animated) and acitta (inanimated). Separate mention of word poggala (matter) in this discussion implies that water can be both animate and inanimate. If the transformation of pudgala does not take place as water, there must be the word jīva not 'poggala' in the 'jīva ya poggalā ya udagattāe vakkamanti' statement of the āgama.

The words jīva and poggala have been used in the context of udaga pariṇati. Generally, water in its natural state remains cool. The water of spring naming 'Mahatapopteer Prabhava Nirjhara' has been considered hot.^[5] Usually hot water becomes achitta but from the present description it signifies that the Apkāyika jīva can also be naturally hot. The fire-bodied souls can grow only in the high temperature. This has been confirmed by the modern science as well.

Statement of Lewis Thomas has been presented in the narration of Bhagvatī which will also be appropriate here.

Lewis R. Thomas has written - there were bacterial species never seen on the face of the earth until 1982, creatures never dreamt of before, living by violation of what we used to regard as the laws of nature, things literally straight out of Hell. Or anyway what we used to think of as Hell, the hot unliveable interior of the earth. Such regions have recently come into a scientific view from the research submarines designed to descend twenty-five hundred meters or more to the edge of deep holes in the sea bottom, where open vents spew superheated seawater in plumes from chimneys in the earth's crust, known to oceanographic scientists as 'black smokers'. This is not just hot water, or steam, or even steam under pressure as exists in a laboratory autoclave (which we have relied upon for decades as the surest way to destroy all microbial life). This is extremely hot water under extremely high pressure, with temperatures in excess of 300 degrees centigrade. At such heat, the existence of life as we know it would be simply inconceivable. Proteins and DNA would fall apart, enzymes would melt away, and anything alive would die instantaneously. We have long since ruled out the possibility of life on Venus because of that planet's comparable temperature; we have ruled out the possibility of life in the earliest years of this planet, four billion or so years ago, on the same ground.

B. J. A. Baross and J. W. Deming have recently discovered the presence of thriving colonies of bacteria in water fished directly from these deep-sea vents. Moreover, when brought to the surface, encased in titanium syringes and sealed in pressurized chambers heated to 250 degrees centigrade, the bacteria not only survived but reproduced themselves enthusiastically. They can be killed only by chilling them down in boiling water. And yet they look just like ordinary bacteria. Under the electron microscope they have the same essential structure - cell walls, ribosomes, and all. If they were, as is now being suggested, the original arch bacteria, ancestors of us all, how did they or their progeny ever learn to cool down? I cannot think of a more wonderful trick.^[6] '

The discussion of sthāvarakāya (immobile beings) as pariṇata (animate) and apariṇata (inanimate) and in Bhagavatī the mention of pudgala as the form of water, gives a new insight to the thinkers of the modern age.

In Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika philosophy, earth, water, fire and air are considered as dravya (substance). Though life in them has not been discussed there but they have been called of three types i.e. the division of body, senses and objects of senses. In Tarka Saṅgraha, it is said that-the soul possesses and the body of water resides in varuṇa loka (as per Vedic and other mythologies, it is a place in this cosmos, where a special kind of deity or demons reside). The body of fire resides in ādityaloka (as mentioned)^[7] and the body of air resides in vāyuloka (as mentioned). With this, it becomes clear that they also have accepted the water - bodied, air - bodied and fire- bodied beings.

In Vedas also, fire, air and water have been accepted as deity. There is always life in deities.