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Jaina Philosophy and Religion
regeneration of the states of attachment and aversion in the soul who has attained the perfect purity in the state of liberation with the spiritual efforts, if we once concede that the soul in the past was pure and at some point of time it assumed the impure states of attachment and aversion? This proves that the impure states have not started at some point of time but are beginningless. The impure states of attachment and aversion are not natural to the soul in the sense that they depend on karma. This is because they rise in the soul bound with karmic matter. And this state of bondage is also beginningless.
One may ask: How can that which has no beginning have an end? The Jaina philosopher answers that this question has no force. It is a matter of experience that the dross found in an ore of gold is as old as gold itself, still it is found to be removed by the action of an alkaline substance or by calcination in a sealed vessel. Exactly like this, the removal of the karmic matter, though bound with the soul from beginningless time, is possible by the practice of spiritual discipline. The dross covers the natural glitter of gold from the beginningless time. Similarly, karmas (karmic matter) cover the pure sentience from the beginningless time. When the dust is removed from the glass with cloth, the glass shines. Similarly, when the karmic impurities are removed from the soul, it shines with pure light of sentience.
From this it follows that we cannot say that first the soul was alone and only afterwards the karma came into existence. Nor can we say that first the karma alone was there and only afterwards the soul came into existence because this will prove the soul to be producible and destructible, which idea is repugnant to the spiritual thinkers, also because the existence of karma is impossible in the absence of the soul. Thus, when these two alternatives are found untenable, the only third alternative that the soul and the karma both are bound together from the beginningless time gets automatically established. That is, in the remote past there was not a time when there was soul alone, nor the time when there was karma alone, but both were bound together from time immemorial.
Types of soul's activities govern the types of karmas (karmic matter). In the Jaina scriptures, eight basic types of karmas are enumerated. They are: knowledge-covering karma, vision-covering karma, feeling-producing karma, deluding karma, longevity-determining karma, body-making karma, status-determining karma and obstructive karma. Soul in its real nature is the highest spiritual light—the pure Existence, the pure Sentience and
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