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The Fourteen Virtue-Stations (Gunasthāna) -
Now, we proceed to briefly describe the fourteen waystations on the soul's journey to perfection. 1. Falsehood Stage (Mithyātva Gunasthāna) -
This is the lowest spiritual stage of a soul. At this stage it is fully in the grip of false-belief and consequent delusion. All the infinite number of creatures of the Nigoda and stationary one sensed beings and a majority of the innumerable living beings of the mainstream classes of heavenly gods, human beings, animals and other subhuman beings and the hellish denizens also belong to this category. Their vision is coloured by the colour of falsebelief and they are unable to see things in their right perspective. They either have no beliefs like the Nigoda creatures or if at all they have a belief it is invariably false. Even amongst the fivesensed living beings the false-faithed beings are always innumerable times more than those of the right-faith. It follows that the grip of falsehood is very strong and breaking away from its shackles is very difficult, to say the least. Also, the duration of this stage of the soul is also extremely long. The only way out of this stage is that of cutting the Gordian knot and breaking free by one of the three reasons of karmic separation, subsidence or destruction cum subsidence. 2. Lingering Taste Stage (Sāsvādana Gunasthāna) -
This is the second spiritual stage of a soul, attainable only on its way down from the stage of right-belief. When a soul that has not attained permanent right-vision regresses from higher stages of right-belief towards falsehood, there comes a stage when it nears wrong-belief but still has a lingering taste of right-belief. This stage has been compared with the state when someone who has eaten sweet milk-rice-pudding (Khīra) and vomits it back. Though the pudding has been vomited back the mouth remains filled with its lingering sweet taste for some time. Its maximum
210 : JAINISM: THE CREED FOR ALL TIMES
