Jainism

Author(s): Herbert Warren
Publisher: Divine Knowledge Society

Page 52

CHAPTER V.-MEANS TO THE END
The means whereby an embodied soul can become a pure or liberated soul.
The underlying principles upon which these theories are based are (1) the fact of the existence of soul, whose characteristic is knowledge (jiva); (2) the fact of the existence of matter of any other real thing which has not consciousness (ajiva); (3) impure souls draw matter towards themselves (asrava), and (4) incorporate it with their own being (bandha); thus has the embodied state of the soul been perpetuated, death being followed by birth elsewhere in a material body. Now if this state of affairs is ever to cease, (5) the influx of matter must be stopped (samvara) and (6) the matter already in combination with the soul must be removed (nirjara). Then, (7) when this is accomplished the soul will live in everlasting enjoyment of all its own natural qualities (moksha).*
STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT (GUNASTHANA)
It is to be remembered that the combination of soul and matter now in question is a subtle one, and that a mere mechanical separation is not possible. By what is called killing, the soul is separated from the body and its forces, but not from the matter of a more subtle nature that is the substance of the energies that render the soul impure.
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* First Principles of the Jain Philosophy by A. L. Jhaveri, London, 1910.