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COMPENDIUM OF JAINISM
varaniya-karma. A wrong or perverted believer is like a blind man who does not see what is good and beautiful or what is bad and ugly.
2) Sāsādana (Downfall)
The downfall is from right-belief. When the .error--feeding passions (anantānubandhi kaşāya) destroy the right belief, the soul falls down from a stage of higher spirituality or from the summit of right belief due to the Karmas, faces wrong beliefs and gets lost in the wilderness of wrong beliefs. This is known as Såsādana.
This stage, which is otherwise known as Sāsādana samyakdrsţi, contemplates a fall from the stage of right faith. A person may attain the stage of right faith by instruction and right understanding. But if he is overcome by passions or wrong thoughtactivity, he may slip down from the upper rung of the ladder to which he might have climbed. During this down-fall, the soul has neither right belief nor wrong belief. In this stage, the soul is said to have operative thought-activity (audayika bhāva). This is a transitory stage but the evolution has to commence again by destruction of the deluding Karma.
3) Samyak-mithyā dịśți (mixture of right and wrong beliefs)
This is a stage in which a person holds right and wrong beliefs mixed together. It is due to indecision or a wavering state of mind, indicating spiritual oscillation between right faith and wrong faith. Such a person neither sticks up to right belief nor gives up wrong belief. This is also a transitory stage. If the right faith revives as a result of Punya or fresh knowledge received from a preceptor, the person may march to the next higher stage; or the soul may as well revert back to the stage of wrong belief.
In all the first three stages the destructive Karma (ghāti) is still present but it is a question of degree. The right belief is not destroyed but is clouded by wrong belief. The mixed thought
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