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68
Jaina Philosophy and Religion
stage, there is no danger whatsoever for him of falling down. After the beginning of destruction of delusion at the eighth-ninth stages, the danger of falling down is totally removed.
[Even one who has attained the eleventh stage falls down because he has caused subsidence of delusion and not its destruction. But if the process of destruction instead of subsidence begins at the eighth-ninth stages, there will remain no possibility of falling down.)
In the term 'gunasthāna' the term 'guna' has the meaning 'degrees of spiritual development'. It is believed that the higher the degrees of spiritual development, the higher are the stages of spiritual development. So the stages of spiritual development are innumerable, because they are as many as are the internal changes of the soul. We divide the stream of a river by the imagined measure of mile, etc. But thereby a permanent boundary line does not come into existence in the stream, nor is the stream actually divided into parts, nor is one part actually separated from another. Similarly, the boundary of any one stage is so connected and mingled with those of the immediately preceding and succeeding ones that all the stages form one continuous stream, so to say. But for the sake of convenience of description that stream is divided into fourteen stages of spiritual development.
The names of the fourteen stages are as follows: Mithyātva, Sāsādana, Miśra, Aviratisamyagdysti, Deśavirata, Pramatta, Apramatta, Apūrvakarana, Anivịttikarana, Sūkşmasamparāya, Upaśāntamoha, Kșīņamoha, Sayogakevati, Ayogikevalī.
1. Mithyātvaguṇasthāna When a living being does not have the right faith in or inclination for the path leading to spiritual welfare, or on the contrary has wrong understanding about it and suffers from illusion and ignorance, it is in the first stage. Living beings from the smallest worm to the great pundits, ascetics, kings and sovereigns exist in this stage. It is so because absence of the true spiritual attitude is mithyātva and where there is mithyātva, all other progress has no value at all. Mithyātva means to accept the sinner as the saint, the evil act as the good act, the wrong path as the right path, and vice versa. Not only that but to believe in superstitions and harm customs is also mithyātva. In short, in the path of spiritual welfare, the lack of discrimination of what is worthy of action from what is unworthy of it is mithyātva.
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