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minute living creatures. Vapours arising from water, fermentation and similar processes involve heat production and therefore imply that there is violence in such processes.
All material energy has dual (hot and cold) thermal effects. Heat energy has three functions: baking; digesting food and providing energy for life; and facilitating physical and chemical changes. The measurement of heat has been shown to be relative to our body temperatures.
Electricity is material energy; it is produced by contact between opposite charges such as that of lightning or meteorite showers. Physicists claim that it is an electron-flow having chemical, thermal and magnetic effects.
Light produces vision in the eye and is material in nature consisting of streams of photon particles. There are three varieties of light mentioned in scriptures: sunlight (35% light, 65% heat);
moonlight/lamp light (99% light, 1% heat); gemological light (reflected light).
There are three effects of light mentioned in the Jain texts: colour, darkness and shadow. The shadow, darkness and lustre are variations of light The sensation of colour is the first effect of light. G.R. Jain classifies colours into spectral, pigmentary and fundamental and suggesting that the Jain texts deal with only primary colours (Jain G.1975: p.128). There are five colours: black, blue, yellow, red and white, mentioned in earlier literature although later Jain seers have amended into seven colours. Of these, the first and the last are composite, indicating the absence or presence of all colours, the three other colours represent the spectrum range (blue to red) of an earlier period. All other colours of the spectrum are subsumed under these three primary colours with each possessing many varieties reflecting the different frequencies. The three primary colours described in Jain literature are identical to the basic colours of the quark, a recently discovered unit of fundamental particles.
Aura colours: The Jain texts mention that the omniscients and the spiritually advanced persons had a colourful shining aura around their head. Six types of auratic colorations (black, blue, grey, yellow, red and white) were recognised, representing degrees of purity. Kirlian photography has proved the existence of auras. It has been observed that the aura of an angry and a pious individual are different; the aura of a pious individual is pleasant, while that of an angry individual is repulsive. Meditation and other self-control practices improve the aura, suggesting the purity of thoughts.
Darkness is another effect of light, however, it is not directly the antithesis of light. Light has two ranges: light of the visible spectrum and light of the invisible spectrum; darkness forms the invisible range for human beings. There are, however, many animals, which see well in the dark.
Shadow is the third effect of light. It has two forms: the formation of dark shadows, and the formation of images, virtual or inverted. The dark shade or shadow is produced when an opaque obstacle in their path obstructs the fine particles of light.
By contrast with opaque bodies plain, concave or convex mirrors, and lenses and gemstones, there are many entities, which do allow the light to pass through them, but repulse it after the encounter, which is known as reflection. When light is reflected from plain mirrors (which were known in earliest times), we see our own image but virtual image laterally inverted (right becomes left and vice-versa). There is one further phenomenon of light, showing the natural process of refraction, the rainbow.
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