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Metaphysics, Ethics and Spiritual Development
193
the knowledge of those who hanker after sensual pleasures and worldly ambitions is regarded as wrong knowledge, however extensive and definitive it may be, because it fosters inordinate and perverse desires and not equanimity; it leads them astray. How can that knowledge which nourishes perverse desires be the means to liberation? It can only place man on the evil path. So the reason why it is regarded as wrong knowledge is quite obvious.
The acquired knowledge may be put to good or bad use. A person possessed of right attitude and a person possessed of wrong attitude adopt diametrically opposite standpoints with regard to the acquired knowledge. The former is always inclined to use it rightly; when under the sway of passions and selfishness, he occasionally makes its bad use, his conscience bites him. On the other hand, the latter being a slave of sensual pleasures and inordinate desires, he uses his knowledge indiscriminately for achieving his selfish ends. He does not feel sorry when he employs his knowledge in accomplishing evil acts; on the contrary, he finds pleasure in doing so. A person having right attitude knows what is right to be right and what is wrong to be wrong; so if at all he inadvertently performs an evil act, he feels very sorry and repents for it. As his intellect is discreet and good, and his soul aspires after spiritual welfare and liberation, he steadily advances on the path of spiritual progress. On the other hand, a person afflicted with wrong attitude does not recognise the difference between good and evil, his mental state is defiled by evil thoughts and desires even when he pretends to be a good man, and so long as this is the state of affairs there is no possibility of his release and rescue.
Thus the Jaina philosophy discriminates between right cognition and wrong cognition from the spiritual standpoint.
The Jaina philosophers recognise five different states (bhāva) of soul. Of them one is essential (natural — svābhāvika) and others are adventitious. In other words, the former does not depend on the presence of material particles of the karma, while the latter depend on it. The five states are as follows: aupaśamika-bhāva, ksāyika-bhāva, ksāyopaśamika-bhāva, audayika-bhāva and pārināmika-bhāva. (1) The aupaśamika-bhāva is that state which is born of upaśama (subsidence) of the material karmic particles associated with soul. Upašama is a sort of spiritual purification that comes about as a result of complete cessation of the manifestation of material particles of the concerned karma which is yet in existence—just like the clarity appearing in water in which dirt has gathered at bottom. (2) The
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