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INTRODUCTION TO JAINISM
the soul due to violent or otherwise unharmonious thoughts and emotions, which limit clarity of mind and true vision, and in this way they develop an almost superhuman compassion for all that lives.
The final goal of the soul's pilgrimage through astounding varieties of forms of existence, in fact all space and time units that can be conceived within the universe, is to reach the point where the consciousness is fully at one with the qualities of the soul: infinite knowledge, infinite purity and infinite freedom within this universe. The possibility of acquiring an unstained clear mind and infallible intuition and insight is no doubt the ultimate dream of every scientist or other truth-seeker. If we really want to know truth about ourselves and the universe and its laws, and the purpose of our existence, of seen and unseen worlds, and our relation with all be-ing and be-ness, and, above all, if we wish to work for the well-being and betterment of the world, for all its inhabitants and for the human condition, we can not avoid practicing of ethics, which means acting in harmony with the laws of the universe.
The Jains divide the path towards purity and final emancipation and omniscience within our universe into fourteen stages" or gunasthānas. Even though it may not be possible for us to live in all respects like a Jain, taking notice of the general principles may be helpful, and is indeed in itself purifying. Opinions differ, and some say that this teaching was invented in the last two millennia, but it may also be a very ancient teaching, as it seems that the concept of the gunasthānas is already visible in the Indus script, and it continues today in the form of the snake ladder game, in which the ladder represents the spiritual path, whereas the snake form denotes passion (S.R. Jain, personal communication).
The first stage is what the Jains call “false worldview.972 This signifies our “normal” state of being, in which the soul is caught in, and suffers from, false appearances or worldly illusions. We have been bound by
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