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MILLENNIA BEFORE DARWIN
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Body determining karma
In western biology plants and animals are classified on the basis of their outer and genetic characteristics. But in Jainism, where the soul is seen as more important than the body, the classification of living beings (as long as they still belong to the non-liberated entities, which of course stand above all karmically determined classifications) is primarily based on the state of the soul within its specific embodiment. The taxonomy of the Jains is based in the first place on the number of sense organs (1 to 5 + mind) which an entity possesses (see chapter 6), because these reflect the karmic condition of the soul. Minerals and plants for example have but one sense, i.e. feeling or touch. The origin of species (including those of the mineral kingdom and invisible beings) is determined exclusively by karma. All entities in the visible and invisible realms and their physical, psychological, mental and environmental conditions have their cause in an action of the soul. What for westerners are mutations and genetic codes would from a Jain point of view, in so far as they have any influence on the condition of the soul, be a result and not an original cause – intermediaries in the process of karma. Real causes are more subtle than physical chemistry, and are made in the consciousness of entities. The relationship between ethical action and thought and their effects has already been discussed in the previous chapter.
Because western biology classifies nature on the basis of physical or sometimes physiological features, it is interesting to discuss here the various kinds of body-determining karma (nāma-karma) and, as a result of this, species-determining karma. There are 93 types of body-determining karma. The first four types of karmic results determine the conditions of existence and the realm of nature (gati) into which the soul is born. These four gatis are the hellish, subhuman, human and celestial realms. All further circumstances which appertain to the physical or fluidic body apply to all these realms, if
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