Book Title: Jain Biology
Author(s): Jethalal S Zaveri, Mahendramuni
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati

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Page 133
________________ bodied (or to be precise wind-bodied) organisms. What is the minimum velocity at which air becomes wind? Unfortunately we do not find such information in any of the three scriptures. It is customary to exclude both fire-bodied and air-bodied organisms from the list of immobile (sthāvara organisms) and included them in the list of mobile ones (trasa organisms) though their existence is the result of the fruition of sthāvara nāma karma and not trasa nāma karma. This is because they are dynamic and not static like the other three-earthbodied, water-bodied organisms and plants. And for this reason they are called 'GATI TRASA’, i.e., they are included in the mobile list by the virtue of their being dynamic. What is the significance of this virtual transfer? Authors of this essay consider that the emphasis on the dynamic character of these organisms signify that their bodies are made of ENERGY. Scriptures never considered matter and energy to be fundamentally different—as did science until recently--but modification of the same substance. Fire energy and wind energy are the two forms of energy which possess the property of being the 'yoni’ of the fire-bodied and airbodied organisms respectively. Let us review, briefly, the scientific view regarding matter and energy. Until Albert Einstein established, in 1905, a fundamental truth about physical reality viz. matter and energy are not different elements as pictured by pre-relativity scientists—the former inert and tangible and latter active and invisible—but two different manifestations of the same cosmic entity instead of being two different entities. Matter was energy in a frozen state while energy was matter in dynamic state. He expressed the interchangeability of matter and energy by the most famous equation in the history of science: E = mc2. The liberation of energy in any formchemical, electrical or nuclear-involves the loss of an equivalent amount of matter. The simplest instance of the liberation of energy is burning of coal where O, + C = CO, + energy, giving 92 units of energy per gram of mixture. If instead of molecular fusion of these two atomic species, we -- 118 : JAIN BIOLOGY Jain Education International For Personal & Private Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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