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MILLENNIA BEFORE DARWIN
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including its rivers and oceans. Earth, forests, fields, and also the inside of the bodies of all creatures (except those of the enlightened ones) are packed with nigodas. They may include bacteria, viruses, Rikettsae, phages, etc. But they occur everywhere in loka (see Chapter 6), including all the invisible realms. Apart from the visible world, all space in physically imperceptible worlds and in heavens and hells is full of them. Apart from the nitya-nigodas, all of them as souls will at some point go through all human stages of development and consciousness, through all celestial stages of consciousness, and will finally become enlightened, omniscient, liberated divine souls.
In the Jain classification system it is interesting that minerals and plants are placed in the same category, without any line of division between them. Like the other kingdoms of nature the mineral kingdom has been subdivided into classes which by means of their "bodies" express a wide scale of karmic effects due to conscious activity.
The level of classification of the beings with one sense is defined by the physical element with which they are connected during their embodiment on earth: they either belong to the earth-bodied beings, or to the water, air, fire, or plant-bodied beings. Though the plant and the mineral kingdom are classified together, the highest category of this class comprises the plants only, because they are placed after the four elements, which are always mentioned in the sequence from low to high.
We find another remarkable classification at the transition between animals and humans. Like the highest animals, we humans have five senses and mental power. We stand on one line with dogs, cows, horses, camels, goats, elephants, birds etc. Humans do not occupy a special place in the classification system but we are regarded as the highest within the five-sensed class for our power of reasoning and physical ability to handle work and to organize it. I have had long discussions about this. I remarked that a dog does not seem to occupy himself, as humans do, with philosophy or
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