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Mahavira & Concept of Transmigration / 101
7. Animal Life
According to Jainism animal life exists. Bad deeds take the jiva to animal life. To deceive others results in animal life. To deceive others vigorously certainly gives animal life. Speaking falsehood gives animal life. Practicing fraud also gives animal life. The story of jiva's wanderings begins with the least evolved state of living beings, technically called nigoda in Jainism. In the state of nigoda, beings possess only one sense ie. sense of touch. In the nigoda state, jiva takes birth and dies eighteen times during the little duration taken in being a thing once. Freeing itself from nigoda state of life, the jiva can take birth in five types of bodily conditions ie. earth-bodied, water-bodied, fire-bodied, air-bodied or individual vegetable bodied organism. The liberation of the jiva from the dark denizen of one sensed life is like the gain of a priceless jewel by a poor man. As compared to the nigoda and one sensed conditions of life, this rise to the condition of mobile life is certainly valuable.
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