Gommatasara Jiva Kanda

Author(s): Nemichandra Siddhant Chakravarti, J L Jaini
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown

Page 88

GOMMATASARA.
nor does the death-bed overflow (máranántika samudgháta take place) in the mixed (Mishra stage).
Commentary.
19
One thing must always be remembered with regard to this and the preceding stage. They are both more or less transitory. The utility and necessity of the downfall (sásádana) stage is simply to mark or explain the thought-activity of the soul during the very short time which it takes in its downfall from right belief in the 4th to wrong belief in the 1st stage. The thought-activity in the mixed stage also is of very short duration, one (Antar-Muhúrta), the minimum being a wink (Ávalí) and an instant, and the maximum being 48 minutes minus one instant. In the thoughtactivity in this stage the soul is both a wrong and right believer. The preservation of wrong belief makes it impossible that he should practise any vows. The vows are reserved for the 5th stage and onwards. They are a part of right conduct; and right conduct must always be preceded and accompanied by right knowledge and right belief.
Another noticeable thing is this. In the mixed stage, as also in the thought-activity due to subsidential-right-belief, there is no bondage of the matter of age-karma. The bondage of the age-karma, as also the death before reincarnation (the agekarma for an incarnation is bound to the soul in the immediately preceding birth, so that a man is born with an age-karma already binding his soul) must take place from the first or the fourth spiritual stage. According to Shri Nemi-Chandra-Áchárya, the death must be from that very stage in which the age-karma is bound. But the commentary of Shri-Abhaya-Chandra page 49, (Gommatsára Jíva-Kánda, Calcutta Press) mentions another opinion that the death must be from the 1st or the 4th stage, but not necessarily from the one in which the age-karma was bound. In this stage there is no death-bed overflow of the soul; this is necessary, because there is no death in this stage.
It would be seen that there can be no bondage of age-karma in this stage, because at a man's death-bed, the same thoughtactivity must prevail by which the age-karma of its next incarnation was bound. And as there can be no death in this, there can be no bondage of age-karma in this stage.
Now why should a man not die in this stage?
Perhaps it is that the vitalities, which keep up the inevitable struggle between right and wrong belief, grow extremely weak