Jainism

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

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As already mentioned, these energies go with the soul at death and by reason of them the being gets a new material body. The energies which render the soul impure, and which make us ignorant, wretched, unkind, cruel, weak, infirm, or mishappen and which bring in their train old age, and death, can be removed from the soul only by mental and moral disciplines. This process is the process of stopping the inflow of fresh matter and removing what matter is already attached to the soul. It is the gradual process of removing in turn the four classes of impelling forces previously mentioned, which are the instrumental causes of the attraction and assimilation of foreign matter by the soul.
JAINISM
This process is considered in fourteen stages, arranged in logical (not chronological) order. It is the process of development; and the process of development has a beginning in time. There is a beginning to the development of the soul; and so it follows that there was a time in the past when this development was not going on in us; and there is always in existence a class of living beings (nigoda) in whom development has not yet begun; it is a class of living beings with which the universe is packed, so that there is not an inch of space anywhere where these are not. They are conscious, very minute, and cannot be seen with the eye or microscope; fire will not kill them, nor will water; they pass through things without being hurt; no human instrument can kill them; they can pass through mountains,-anything. There is an infinity of them; and this is the source whence come the developing and liberated souls. It is the state of existence before development has begun. When once out of this state the For Private & Personal Use Only