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JAINISM essential factors of the soul's existence, but which hinder the soul's natural activities. These unnatural energies may be stopped and destroyed by stopping the influx (samvara) and by riding the soul of matter (nirjara). This is effected by practising the thirty-five ordinary rules of conduct, self-control, twelve special rules of conduct, and concentration, as described in the preceding pages; and by practising more advanced forms of mental and moral disciplines, not given in this book. In this process of stopping the inflow and of ridding the soul of matter, the individual develops gradually through fourteen stages, in which there appears, more and more, unimpeded activity of the immortal self, in the form of right knowledge, wisdom, love, strength, blissfulness, etc., until, at the finish, every atom of physical matter in combination with the soul and the consequent ignorance, foolishness, cruelty, weakness, pain, misery, etc., are removed from us for ever (moksha).
The above statements are put forward as being literally true; they are not figurative or mystical; they are about concrete realities, are not abstractions, and are of universal application to living beings.
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