Pudgala - Matter

Pudgala - Matter

There are many aspects of existence, which Jain philosophers have described and explained ahead of the researches of modern science. Particularly, the intangible world of sūkṣma (micro) has found a strong alibi in the form of modern physics. Yet, science has not been able to surmount various frontiers, which were conquered by the ancient Jain ascetics. Jain knowledge throws several such challenges to modern science. Out of them we may deal with three important topics of Jain literature:

• Massless matter
• Formation of Mahāskandh
• Tamaskāya - the dark zone.

Massless Matter

Jain Philosophers were the first one, who believed that all material existence could be divided into two categories:

• Mass carrying (gross matter)
• No mass carrying (fine matter)

This original classification of matter is based on the Jain Theory of Soul. The doctrine of soul is the central core of Jain religion and philosophy. They maintain that all the souls of worldly beings are eternal and possess the cloud of Karma i.e. fine massless matter. Once the karmic matter is removed or annihilated and the influx of new karma is stopped, the worldly soul transforms into a pure, liberated soul.

The doctrine of soul has opened a gate to the studies on karmic matter under the name of ‘Theory of Karma’, which is very popular in Jain philosophy. It deals with the properties, behavior, position, velocity etc. of the massless karmic matter. Probably, the Jain thinkers have done the earliest theoretical attempt on the studies on ‘Massless Matter’. It is remarkable that this division of the contents of the universe in two forms i.e. the gross and fine matter is still used today under the name of matter and force.

Up to the beginning of the twentieth century, Einstein firmly believed that ‘Mass is matter, and matter is mass’. Hence, it was not proper on the part of the Jain philosophers to argue that matter and force carrying particles are synonymous with their philosophical terms of gross pudgala (massive) and the fine pudgala (massless) respectively. Now, we find that during the researches in particle physics in the sixties of 20th century, force-carrying particles like photon, graviton and gluon have been considered to be nearly massless. Presently, physicists are trying to find whether massless particles were present during big bang. If so, how they were converted to mass. In this context it is interesting to study the concepts of massless pudgala described in Jain philosophy, which is nearly two thousand years old philosophy.

The concept of massless matter in Jain literature has elaborately been discussed under the name of sukṣma pudgala. Pudgala dravya is a synonym of the term matter.

The Jains hold that pudgala has been distinguished by its possession of touch, taste, smell and colour. These are the primary (eternal) attributes of pudgala. In addition of these essential attributes pudgala has saṅsthāna i.e. form or figure of its own. The change in magnitude and intensity in various essential attributes of pudgala causes the evolution of certain secondary qualities such as sound, cohesion, dimension, figure, divisibility, opacity, mass, radiant heat, light etc. All these attributes are derivatives and do not claim as essential attributes.

The distinguishing attributes have been further classified. Pudgala may have four or eight varieties of tactility, two tastes, two smells and five colours. The study of all these attributes is not directly related to the masslessness of pudgala and therefore reflections have been confined to tactility only. Out of eight forms of tactility (cold, hot, oily, dry, soft, coarse, light & heavy) discussion has been centered on two forms only, which are responsible for the evolution of mass. These forms are oily and dry, which may be termed as positive and negative, charges respectively.

It will be helpful to study the other classification of pudgala discussed in Jain literature. Pudgala exists in two forms:

• Parmāṇu
• Skandha or molecules and amalgam

Parmāṇu is the smallest part of the pudgala but it is different from the term atom. Bhagwati Sutra describes at various levels the diverse attributes of parmāṇu. Regarding tactility, each parmāṇu has two kinds of tactility. It will be either cold or hot and oily or dry. By permutation and combination four types of Parmānus are possible. Parmāṇu may be:

• Cold and oily (snigdha)
• Cold and dry (rukṣa)
• Hot and snigdha
• Hot and rukṣa

It shows that these are four original kinds of tactility of pudgala. Mass is not the original attribute of pudgala i.e. matter.

The most remarkable contribution of the Jains to the atomic theory relates to their analysis of atomic linking or mutual attraction or repulsion of parmāṇus to form skandhs (molecules). Such combinations bring about new qualities in skandha. Mass is one of them. Mass is not the fundamental property of the parmāṇu. According to the Jains, parmāṇus combining to form skandha (molecule) may exist mainly in two forms: sthūla (gross) and sūkṣma (fine). The discussion of sūkṣma pudgala is interesting and illuminating. It is of two types:

• Hatusfarśi pudgala with four attributes of tactility
• Aṣṭfarśi pudgala with eight attributes of tactility.

Catusfarśi (four Touches) Pudgala

Chatusfarshi pudgalas have cold, hot, oily and dry tactility. These pudgalas have no mass. The large increase in oily tactility during combination causes the evolution of mass. The large increase in dry tactility makes the pudgala lighter. The other tactility is responsible for the evolution of other properties of the molecule. The large increase in cold and oily tactility brings about softness in the pudgalas whereas increase in hot and dry tactility brings about hardness in the molecule.

Velocity

According to the Jains, the massless pudgala moves with tremendous velocity without gaining any mass. The parmānu can move from one end of the universe to the other in a unit fraction of time. It means that the Jain concept regarding the velocity of pudgala parmānu is much greater than the velocity of light. Recently the Indian scientist Prof. Sudersen has discussed about the particle, which moves with the velocity greater than the velocity of light. It is against the Einstein equation. The difficulty with the modern scientist is that they have categorized the material particles on the basis of proper mass and velocity whereas Jainology discusses massless fine pudgala on the basis of oily and dry tactility. It is interesting to quote the heading that has appeared in press:

What's faster than the speed of light? Light. The details are as follows:

Scientists have apparently broken the universe's speed limit. For generations, physicists believed there is nothing faster than light moving through a vacuum a speed of 300,000 Km per second. But in an experiment in Princeton, New Jersey, Physicists sent a pulse of laser light through cesium vapor so quickly that it left the chamber before it had even finished entering. The pulse traveled 310 times the distance it would have covered if the chamber had contained a vacuum. Researchers say it is the most convincing demonstration yet that the speed of light supposedly an ironclad rule of nature - can be pushed beyond known boundaries, at least under laboratory circumstances.

‘This effect cannot be used to send information back in time,’ said Mr. Wang Lijum, a researcher with the private NEC Institute ‘however, our experiment does show that the generally held conception that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light is wrong.’

The results of the work by Mr. Wang, Mr. Alexander Kuzmich and Mr. Arthur Dogariu were published in the journal ‘Nature’. ‘The achievement has no practical application right now, but such experiments have generated much excitement in the international community of theoretical and optical physicists,’ said Mr. Raymond Chiao, a physicist at the Berkeley University of California who was not involved in the work. ‘This is a break-through in the sense that people have thought it being impossible.’ Massless pudgala is densely packed in the entire space.

The relationship of space and matter was not well understood in the field of science until the idea of energy fully developed. Nobel Laureate Erwin Schroedinger in the article ‘What is matter?’ mentioned that the gravitational forces, scattered and diffracted light, are reaching the far end of the universe from the remote starts situated at the distant places. No space is left vacant. Jainology adds to it by accepting that particles finer than photons exist, which are massless and may move with a greater velocity than the velocity of light. They are fully packed in the entire space but do not obstruct the movement of other pudgalas.

In the sixties of 20th century, experiments were conducted by scientists, in which protons were collided with other protons or electrons at high speeds, which indicated that they in fact are made up of smaller particles. These experiments showed that there are only three fundamental families of matter known as Electron family, Muon family and Tau family whose particles are named as ‘up quark’, ‘down quark’ and ‘electron’. It is believed that these quark particles originate right from the period of big bang of the universe and are fundamental particles. The particle physicists established that the universe around us consists of six fundamental ‘flavors’; i.e. up, down, strange, charmed, bottom and top. These recent experiments carried out by CERN and SLAC on quarks have thrown light on the behaviour of particles carrying massless forces.

Stephen Hawking in his book ‘A brief History of Time’ has described four categories of the particles carrying forces. They are:

• Gravitational force
• Electromagnetic force
• Weak nuclear force
• Strong nuclear force

Except the weak nuclear force, the other three forces carry the particles of graviton, photon and gluon respectively. These particles do not obey the exclusion principle i.e. there is no limit to the number that can be exchanged and so they can give rise to a strong force.

The force carrying particles exchanged between matter particles are said to be virtual particles, because unlike ‘real’ particles, a particle detector cannot directly detect them. Even then they exist, because they do have a measurable effect; they give rise to forces between matter particles. These particles also exist in some circumstances as real particles, when they directly can be detected. These particles appear in the form of waves as waves of light or gravitational waves. The behavior of gluon particles is very unique and appears sometimes as metaphysical. However, experiments suggest that gluon, a massless particle must have been present right from the time of formation of quarks after big bang.

The outcome of these scientific studies is likely to lead us a long way in understanding the behavior of Karmic particles which are massless and which control the actions of the soul i.e. the self. It is evident from the above discussion that Jain philosophy’s contribution in the field of material science is quite unique.

Inanimate Mahāskandha

Inanimate mahāskandha is a form of pudgal, which spreads throughout the universe. This has been described in the process of kevali-samudghāta, a phenomenon exclusively credited to the Jains. Kevali-samudghāta happens only to those liberating souls who are left with little life span and the period required for emancipation of karmic matter is relatively more. In such singularly abnormal case the following sequence of events takes place:

• The soul expands into the universe in such a way that each pradeṣa (space point) of the soul penetrates into each pradeṣa of the universe.
• Simultaneously, the existing karmic pudgals also inflate and get dissociated from the soul permanently.
• Unlike other religions where it is said that the liberated soul amalgamates with God, Jains believe that the souls squeezes back to his normal size and re-enters the body leaving behind the network karmic pudgals in the universe as snake sheds its slough. This left behind network of karmic pudgals is called inanimate Mahāskandha.
• The next moment, the liberated soul migrates to the designated abode of Siddha

During inflation, the soul spreads out in four time-moments to fully encompass the loka:

• First time-moment: One dimension from bottom to top is linearly covered during this period when the soul opens up downwards and upwards. The shape assumed by the soul resembles a stick.
• Second time-moment: In this period, the soul spreads in left and right planes to form a shape resembling the two shutters of a door thus covering the second dimension.
• Third time-moment: This period is for expansion in the third dimension. This is achieved by the spinning around the vertical axis. The shape is now almost like a cylinder standing upright.
• Fourth time-moment: As the shape of the universe is made up of pyramid type structures, there are several areas still left to be filled. All these are filled in this last leg.

The description of the movement of the soul during liberation is not bound to space and time. The velocity attained is infinite; to cover the entire dimension is one moment. German scholars have studied the Jain āgamas very deeply and according to them the word samaya (time-moment) has been used in a two-fold manner. One describes the smallest unit of time while the other stands for a unique moment in time. In case of the soul attaining Nirvana, Ek samaya describes this exceptional moment.

Scientific View

Modern physics so far have been able to demonstrate that only light has a motion beyond the laws of relativity. In the last chapter, we have stated that theoretically, only massless particles can achieve the speed of light. Physicists have conceptualized various such particles like gluon, graviton, photon etc. Devises like electronic microscopes, cathode-ray picture tubes have firmly established the presence of electrons. Similarly, nuclear reactors and study of stars have conclusively proved the presence of other atomic particles like neutrons and protons. However, mathematical derivation of massless particles yet has to become a physical and experimental reality. Though in same sporadic experiments, scientists reported to have observed lasers moving faster than light. A brief description of an interesting experiment is as follows:

Experiment:

Physicists conducted an experiment in New Jersey, Princeton. In this the laser beam was passed through the cesium vapor. They observed that the laser beams were emerging even before entering the chamber. In common sense it means that the beams were traveling faster than the light. Though this experiment needs validation through repetitive consistency, a hope exists in the scientific world to break the barrier of the speed of light.

Conclusion:

Motions in sūkṣma and sthūla worlds are different. Soul or any micro entity travels at infinite speed thus rendering the time involved as a redundant entity. Time actually reduces to a ‘moment’. In one moment of time, the micro entity can cover either the smallest distance from one space co-ordinate to the neighboring one or can travel from one to the other end of the universe covering a distance of 14 rajju. Such examples are classified as exceptional and unique happenings, which may scientifically be described as singularities. Aspraśada gati, as described in Jain āgamas, if studied scientifically, can open up valuable lead to the scientists. Quarks and other sub-atomic particles behave in a manner that is close to the characteristics of sūkṣma dravya mentioned extensively in the Jain literature. Science, hopefully, will unravel these secrets of sūkṣma dravya in the near future.

Tamaskāya

Fine matter forming the Tamaskāya is abounding in dark characteristics. No other matter in loka is darker abstain from these regions of Tamaskāya fearing the entrapment. It is like an imprisonment for them. Jains believe that the stars are vehicles of heavenly deities and Tamaskāya is so dark that its eddy currents can engulf even the biggest stars. They bring us to a very interesting possibility of comparing these Jain cosmic entities of kṛṣṇa-rajji and Tamaskāya with the modern concept of black holes. Its description is available in Thānaṅ āgama as follows:

‘Arunavar Island is separated by innumerable intervening islands from Jambu Island. At the outermost periphery is situated Arunaver Ocean. Traveling 42 thousand Yojanas in this ocean towards the edge, there raises a layer of apkaya pudgals (fine particles predominantly containing water) that expands after rising around 1721 yojanas. These layers rising from all around the outer edge look like lotus leaves and extends up to the region of kṛṣṇa-rajji encompassing four pantheons (devlok) including Saudharma, Tamaskāya reaches up to the ṛṣta limit of the fifth devaloka.’

Black Holes and their Creation

By definition, a Black Hole is a dead star whose gravitation is so intense that even the light photons cannot escape from it. Absence of light makes them ‘black’ and the way that gulps down other stars in their vicinity identifies them as ‘hole’. Just a few years back, we knew our universe to be consisted of galaxies having stars, planets and moons as their family members. Of late, the presence of innumerable Black Holes has been confirmed beyond doubt.

In would be easier to understand a Black Hole, if the process of its creation was known. A star is born when the hydrogen atoms accumulate and starts off the process a nuclear fusion. As a result, the gravitational force remains in equilibrium with the heat generated. As the fuel of the star nears exhaustion, it cools off and the equilibrium of gravitation and hear is broken. With reduced head, the gravitation takes over and the gases formed by the constant burning of nuclear fuel collapse inwards. The volume of the star starts shrinking and more and more gases try to accommodate in the reduced space. This leads to increased density and therefore enhanced gravitation, which, in turn, attracts more mass within progressively reducing volume. A cumulative process or chain reaction thus sets up, at the end of which the gravitation becomes so intense that the entire remaining gases collapse towards the dense centre with tremendous crematorium. This ball of dense mass is called Black Hole. Its gravitational pull becomes so strong that even the massless photons cannot travel out of it and thus it becomes invisible. Astrophysicists could detect these Black Holes only by indirect evidence.