If you go back and follow your link to the wiki page, then go down to
the last three (3) lines just above the references section at the
bottom, you will see the following information:
According to 2002 data:[14]
· The number who have ever been born is 106,456,000,000
· The world population in mid-2002 was
..6,215,000,000
· The percentage of those ever born who were living in
2002 was 5.8%
If accurate, that means there are plenty of jivas to hang out here -
too many in fact.
As denizens of modernity, one of our problems in evaluating such
possibilities is that our cosmologies are extremely truncated. We
think in terms of course materiality when in fact Indic metaphysics
and cosmology (particularly hindu and buddhist) consider matter to be
as much a qualitative value as it is a quantitative measure using the
gross senses. The word "loka" is usually translated as *world* but
actually means *locale*. In this view, the physical solar system is
only the gross mapping of our locale at the level closest to our
physical sense organs. The local universe of Bhu-mandala is therefore
considered immense when compared to the standard model.
A possible follow up question may also be
intriquing - where are the other 100+ billion jivas?
empty
--- In [email protected], "curtisdeltablues"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> " I'm always amused by the New Age tendency to claim
> > that they were *famous* people in the past. The Rama
> > guy claimed he was Cardinal Richilieu; I can't see
> > that *at all*. And Shirley MacLaine's been any
> > *number* of famous people. Wasn't anyone ever the
> > scullery maids and the cooks and the janitors? :-)"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
