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Figure 2: Soul and impurity at different times, size of impurity represents its magnitude and shade represents quality.
Technically, the impurities are bhava karmas. As karmas shed the impurities decrease, there is change in quantity as well as in quality. The pure soul being non-corporeal is non-doer it cannot perform any physical act. The source of all actions, mental, verbal and physical, is the impurities and so the impure soul is regarded as doer.
There are two ways to describe the existence of the worldly soul.
1. In the first kind of description distinction is not made between the soul and the impurities. The worldly functions, comprising mental, verbal and physical actions, are performed by the impure soul. The passions are also generated in this soul and it leads to bonding of karma, which changes the state of the soul. As a result the impure soul experiences continuous transformation as shown in figure 1.
2. In the second kind of description as shown in figure 2 the soul is separated from the impurities and it is assumed that the pure soul does not undergo above transformations in its state, the changes take place in the impurities only. This is implied to mean that the pure soul remains unaffected, the source is, and the changes are experienced by the impurities i.e. impure consciousness is the cause of changes and it also experience their effects. The passions are generated in the impure consciousness, and they affect the actions.
The first way of description focusing on modes of the soul is called the vyavahara naya or the empirical or relative view of describing the soul. In this approach the soul is the doer and experiences the consequences. The second way of description focusing on the unchanging soul substance is called the nishchaya naya or the absolute view of describing the soul. In this approach the pure soul is considered to be non-doer and non-experiencing the consequences, the acts of doing and experiencing the results of actions are ascribed to the impurities or the impure virtual structure of the soul. It may be noted that both views of the soul are real; they view the reality in a particular way. The second approach does help in conceiving the fact that at any instant the pure soul is distinct from its impurity and when all impurities are eliminated at some stage only the pure soul is left out, which is the liberated state. However it must be kept in mind that the impurities could not exist without the soul. Jainism believes that impurities are associated with the soul from the beginning less past and at no time in the past the soul was
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