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Samayasara
Chapter - 9
in the process, is the precise knowledge of the impurities which contaminate the purity.
In the case of gold, impurities are found to exist at two levels. Firstly, there is the crude and visible ore which is mixed up with the precious metal in a comparatively, superficial manner. In the common commercial practice, gold is recovered from the ore by process of separation which may be a combination of melting and chemical refining. The gold, thus recovered is then ready for most commercial applications.
The purity of the gold thus recovered, may be 99.00 to 99.99 percent depending upon the refining efficiency of the process used and is generally marketed as such. For most practical uses, this purity is good enough and the gold is called pure or standard gold. But chemically this gold is not pure gold and its properties will be nearly but not exactly identical to those of pure gold. The impurities which remain are difficult to identify and even more difficult to separate because they consist of minute atoms of other elements usually copper, iron etc.-inextricably combined with the atoms of gold. In most practical applications, the impurities are not only ignored but in many cases, such as making ornaments etc. further impurities are deliberately added to increase the mechanical strength of the precious metal. And so, empirically, this gold is accepted as pure gold.
In the case of the soul (Self) also, the impurities exist at two levels. Firstly, there is the gross physical body which is comparatively, easily identified as an alien, because its characteristic attributes viz. colour, smell etc. are recognized as physical or material attributes. The series of phyical states is, also, not difficult to identify as being different from psychical. A regular practice of total relaxation with proper technique (kāyotsarga) accompanied with self-meditation (concentrated perception in which the body and the soul are mentally separated) would result in a real experience in which the two are distinguished as separate entities.
Thus, pure psychic states-knowledge, awareness-and pure physical states-hardness/softness, visibility-are not as difficult to identify as those dispositions which are produced by the interaction of the soul and its bondage of karma. For example, the states of
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