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MILLENNIA BEFORE DARWIN
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The next group determines the stability or instability of the body and its substances, such as bodily fluids, muscular tissue, fat, bone, marrow, veins, digestive juices, blood, etc..
Finally the Sūtra mentions four karmas which determine whether a body will look dull and sluggish, and whether someone will have a good or a bad name as a result. Too often people or even animals are despised because of their physical appearance, whereas he, she or it may have done nothing but good during the present life.
Whether or not we agree with all the details from the viewpoint of modern science is not the most important thing. The modern world with its ever refining measuring techniques will find its own way to describe the interplay between all these energies, fields and states of matter in relation to consciousness and its free choice. In any case it is remarkable - to say the least - that in the days of Aristotle and Archimedes, when occidental science had only just started the Jains, already had a detailed view of the principles of ecology, biology, evolution, physiology, atoms and molecules, and above all, the logic behind them. If the detailed knowledge gained in recent centuries by means of refined instruments is combined with the Jain background, science will become more philosophical, more universal, more ethical, and more holistic. The biological teachings of the Jains include not only the physical, but also the invisible worlds of beings and forces - a field of science which in the west is still associated with superstition and the barely recognized science of parapsychology. Without a vision which includes the whole universe with all its phenomena, modern man can never reach satisfactory and final solutions.
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