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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
soul may be drawn first to embodiment in the soil of the earth and then be transferred by its karma to the sprouting seed of a tree. In the case of the human soul, this seems to refer to the process of transmigration of particular aspects of the soul through various stages between two human existences, rather than to an actual loss of humanness (or "animalness” or “plantness” etc. as the case may be) or other higher qualities.
Modern biology teaches us that “we” first go through a unicellular ovum stage, and then through a sequence of embryological stages which among other things show similarity with a sea urchin, a fish, a then a tailed vertebrate; a newborn child hardly differs from the baby of a great ape as far as its mental capacities are concerned. As a child and adolescent we experiment once again which what humankind has already learned when in its more primitive stages. Our soul is involved in all stages of physical, emotional and mental growth, but is it possible to say when exactly we became “we”? If we - I mean our souls - pre-existed long before our present birth, we do indeed go in progressive sequence through a unicellular and maybe even a mineral stage, and then a plantlike stage and a primitive and evolved animal stage before the soul accomplishes its present human incarnation in full.
In the rich story tradition of the Jains, humans are almost always reborn as humans (after having spent some time in either heaven or hell), though animal incarnations do occur (in the stories) to work out a particular karma, followed by a return to human incarnation after some time. This happened, for example, in one of the former lives of the last Tīrthamkara, Mahāvīra, who incarnated as a lion, and in that situation became convinced of the need to adopt the pious attitude of non-violence.
Whether philosophically correct or not, the popular belief that we human souls may incarnate in any form, and therefore that any life-form may have been a human in the past, gives rise to a universal awareness of brotherhood for all creatures alike. An animal you kill may have been your
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