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A Critique
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members of the solar family and revolve round it in definite orbits and moons are satellites of the planets. So the most important heavenly bodies are stars. And they are no longer pin points of inscrutable light but objects of the individual personalities. Stars are 'born' and they 'die'. Their life-span is of the order of 50,000 to 1,00,000 million years. Our sun, for example, was born some 5,000 million years ago and quickly came to age assuming the characteristics it has today. For another 5,000 million years, it will continue to be in the prime of life. After that it will expand and burn away fiercely for 2,000 million years and begin to shrink and decline to a long old age. After 50,000 million years it will have turned black and heatless i.e. dead. The bodies of the stars are made up of primordial gas and dust, more than half of which is hydrogen which is transformed into helium by nuclear fusion. The process of nuclear fusion converts matter into energy which is radiated. The amount of hydrogen steadily decreases while that of helium increases. When the entire stock of hydrogen is used up, there is nothing to burn. The star becomes black and heatless and dies. Thus the life-span of this celestial object starts from a cloudy birth and ends into frozen extinction. Thus, if the star is a jyotiska deva, then the stellar dust is the stuff belonging to the vaikriya group.
Aharaka sarira is not a common body. It is very occasionally created by learned sages only. Taijas sarīra and kārmaṇa śarīra are the supersubtle bodies assimilated by every soul from the stuff of the appropriate group. They are permanent companions of the soul, and are abolished only if and when the soul is emancipated. Taijas sarira is the link between the soul and the karmaņa sarira. It is the source of energy required by the vital processes of all living organisms. As its name suggests, taijas stuff is probably electrical (or electromagnetical), and the electrical characteristic manifested by the bodies of living organisms are caused by the taijas sarīra.
We have briefly described the functions of karmaņa śarīra in the previous chapter and we can hardly add anything more here
1. This statement should not be construed as a belief of the Jains nor that of the author. It is merely a conjecture emanating from circumstantial similarities.
