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us to accept the harmful as the beneficial is ‘false-knowledge'. Here, the question arises as to how any knowledge, inherent to the soul, be false. This can be understood through an example. It is natural for a mirror to reflect a true image of the object that is put in front of it. However, if the mirror-surface were covered with a layer of dust, the image that it would reflect would not be clear and sharp. The thicker the layer of dust covering the mirror, the worse will be the image reflected by it. Now, through a beginningless association with the karma-matter, a layer of knowledge obscuring (Iñānā-varanīya) karma covers the inherent knowledge of the soul and it dulls its perception. The thicker the layer of the knowledge obscuring karma, the duller will be the perception and more distorted it will be. The dull perception is nothing but ignorance and the distorted one is false-knowledge. Through the process of separation of the karma-matter from the soul, we gradually remove this layer of knowledge obscuring karma as well and there comes a stage when we can see and perceive things as they are. This is called the dawn of rightvision and right-knowledge. When the layer disappears completely, there dawns the complete knowledge that can perceive and know all the universal entities in all their modes in all the three times – the past, the present and the future. This is enlightenment or omniscience or Sarvajñatā. Five Stages Of Right-knowledge –
We have already discussed that right-knowledge is the knowledge from which the curtain of knowledge obscuring karma has been lifted to a certain extent. As this curtain obscuring the knowledge lifts progressively higher and higher, the higher and higher stages of right--knowledge get revealed. According to the clarity and extent to which it can perceive things, which is, in turn, achieved through destruction (ksaya) or destruction cum subsidence (ksayopaśama) of knowledge obscuring karma, five types of right-knowledge have been mentioned in the canonical 140 : JAINISM: THE CREED FOR ALL TIMES
