Bright Ones in Jainism

Author(s): J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

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THEIR BODIES.
The Gods have fluid or changeable (vaikriyaka) bodies. According to Jainism, all living, embodied, or mundane souls have always at least three bodies:
(1) The Karmic body, or the body made up of Karmic matter, which is constantly changing according to the intensity or mildness of the motives and according to the actions which impelled by our passions and impulses, we are doing by means of our mind, speech and body. It is this body which determines our condition of life, our (i) faith, (ii) knowledge, (iii) character, (iv) happiness, (v) physical and physiological condition, (vi) family (vii) success and prosperity, and (vii) age, and the whelo, infinity of conditions and circumstances involved in these eight main classifications of our worldly existence;
(2) the Taijasa body or the luminous or electric body, which is co-extensive with the Karmic body and is made up of the. peculiar Taijasa molecules; and
(3) the Audarika body (literally got from the mother's womb) or physical body. Hunman and sub-human beings have this. But the Gods have the Vaikriyaka or fluid body, which they can change at will. Milton rightly mentions this as the body of the angels in his Paradise Lost. The Christian, Mohammedan and other systems of religion hold a similar view. Cabalistic and mystic systems of ancient Greece, Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon also had some sort of faith in this phenomenon of changeable bodies. Popular magic, even of the black kind, connected with wizard's lore and witchcraft, also recognized that men can change themselves into animals etc. Fables and fictions in the East and the West, all the world over are familiar with this theory of physical transfiguration. The famous Fasana-e-ajayaba (The Wonderful Tale) of Urdu literature, richly illustrates this, as the Prince Jan-e-Alam could change himself into a monkey and back to his human form again. Thus the changeability of form is a well-known phenomenon. The Gods in Jainism have all a body which they can change at will, it is their Vaikriyaka or third body. They possess it universally, like their antipodean analogues-the denizens of the nether world, the embodied mundane souls of hell.