Bīja Niyama is the law of organic life.
Bīja literally means ‘seed’, in the sense of ‘germ of life’. Thus, Bīja Niyama, is essentially the law that governs the growth of life…from plant growth to the birth and growth of higher beings.
All the immutable facts of life prove the existence of the law that governs life.
When matter has reached a certain amount of equilibrium, that is, when the 4 properties of matter (headed under the 4 elements) have become highly balanced, then there becomes possible the growth of a faculty of life (jivit-indriya).
This faculty of life is what animates (physical) matter, from very tiny particles of matter (nowadays called cells), to the most complex beings (which are made up of those particles). And whatever is animated matter, the laws that govern its continuation, sequence, decline and disappearance are headed under the law called Bīja Niyama.
The dependency of beings on their environment and on outside material for their survival…the assimilation of external matter as food into the organism, the impulse and capacity for reproduction,…the modification of seeds or offsprings through sexual reproduction (mutuality condition), as well as the attraction or repulsion towards those beings that potentially will aid in or obstruct the satisfaction of these needs and inner impulses… all affirm the governance of organic life by a certain law and the voidness of randomness of life.
Thus, this law extends to the growth and evolution of various faculties for knowing the environment and those for responding in different ways to it. All the faculties for mimicking, gesturing and for communication in general, have their lawfulness to them.
The condition of health through the vitality of the body has its lawfulness to it and thus can be controlled or modified by the comprehension of certain aspects of this law.‡
In as much as the material which forms the base for the mind is organic material (viz. for human beings, the nervous system and the brain), the law of organic life even has a fair amount of influence over the workings and efficacy of the mind.
How beings interact, how beings live, and the duration of their life ending in death is not a random thing but depends on the workings of different aspects of this law and by that may be comprehended and manipulated by the comprehension of this law.
The fixed sequence of the stages of life, from germination or conception, through tender youthfulness, reaching to the peak of maturity, just to from there on make a turn, gradually declining, becoming of age and loosing in quality and strength, until eventually reaching the outer end of life, which is death, all are signs of a lawfulness and order in regards to the phenomena of life.
But equally so are the continuation of qualities thru heredity, that is the inheritance of qualities from one generation to the next…and thus the enabling of another scale of progression, permitting the evolution of the various species.
On a yet different scale, as nations, countries and communities are agglomerations of life, their rise, prospering and decline is under the influence of the law of life. That is, to the degree they are not governed by the formerly mentioned law or by those to follow, these conglomerations of living matter and living beings, will be ruled by the cyclical moods of living nature. Growing and declining by the dictates of this law. Which grants life and growth, yet when the time has come, calls back that life to provide the material for its further creations.
† kayaviññatti, vaciviññatti
✢ by nutriment and support condition
‡Even those currents, of magnetism, electricity and other radiations, that are continuously influencing all living beings including those treated by the old science of Astrology, although as such belonging to the Law of Utu, are curbed by this law through the receiving or resistance and further transmittance of the different types of organisms (viz. the vitality of those organisms) or the different types of beings.
