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continuous one, it is marked by certain land-marks on its way just like a train journey is continuous but is marked by some stations and junctions on the way. The final destination of the soul that has awakened from the deep sleep of delusion is deliverance or Moksa.
In this chapter we shall discuss the fourteen way-stations that mark a soul's journey from delusion to deliverance. In Jaina parlance they are known as “Virtue-stations or Gunasthāna or Jīvasthāna.
Rise From Deluding Falsehood -
Delusion is caused by the false-belief that soul is not different from the body that embodies it. Under the influence of such delusion the spiritual flaws like attachment and aversion, indulgence in material pleasures, negligence towards spiritual duties occurs and actions directed by the gripping passions take place.
According to the Jaina belief infinite number of extremely fine creatures belonging to vegetable kingdom and known as Nigoda live in a permanent state of delusion. Their condition is so acutely miserable due to continuous and quick births and deaths (they get born and die a innumerable times in as short an interval of time as blinking of an eye) that they get no respite to become conscious of their miserable condition. They live in such condition for an eternity and only some of them occasionally get a chance to come out of such miserable existence and come into the mainstream of living beings where it is possible to rise above falsehood and delusion. It is believed that only as many Nigoda creatures come into the mainstream as attain liberation and become Siddha. Again out of the Nigoda creatures that break free from their lot and come into the mainstream, too, only a few are endowed with the quality of liberatability and can rise above falsehood. They are called Bhavya. A large number of them are
GUŅASTHĀNA ( SPIRITUAL STAGES ): 207
