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MILLENNIA BEFORE DARWIN
105
When we approach the changes of form which take place in nature from a Jain-scientific perspective, we conclude that every change has a cause which ensues from the law of karma - the universal law of cause and effect. In Darwinist thinking, too, changes take place as a result of causes. But at present this philosophy does not go beyond the point of localizing this cause within the realm of “chance” – i.e. the (to us) unknown. The Jains on the other hand teach that changes are initiated by the organism itself. The aspect of an organism which brings about these changes they call the soul, or jīva - living, conscious substance. Thoughts and the emotional vibrations of the soul are the cause of a complexity of processes moving in the direction of result. On the bodily level causes express themselves in a particular form. It is therefore the inner activity of a living being which determines the form in which it will cloth itself. Thus the changes of form in nature are guided from within, and not by external influences independent of the control of the being which inhabits the body. The soul of a frog has thus had in the foregoing incarnations of its endlessly long past, exactly those vibrations which now give it its frog body and its “frog psychology.” It will feel as a frog feels, and thus produce the corresponding vibrations, but no doubt it will also add something new through the exercises and experiences of its life – until the frog body is no longer suitable to accommodate the soul. The concept of "evolution” in the occidental sense can thus be wholly explained from the choices and preferences of souls. These choices and preferences, even though they are directed without knowledge of the results to which they will lead, cause the psychological, mental as well as physical characteristics of men, animals, plants, minerals, and even invisible beings in all worlds. The outer world around us, the environment, is the result of the totality of the inner life of all living beings. So it is the souls of the individual beings which determine the world of forms, making use of the endless possibility of characteristics and modes that nature offers.
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