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1.2.15 Liberation through Samyaktva
The soul has unending qualities. The key amongst them are knowledge, perception and conduct. The qualities are part of the inner nature of the soul. They are purified when the soul becomes pure and sullied when the soul loses its purity.
The rise and fall of the purity of the soul with respect to the purity of its qualities like knowledge, etc. is measured in terms of gunasthaana (stages of spiritual development).
Gunasthaana may also be understood as under:
1. Gunasthaanas are the graded stages of spiritual progress
2. Gunasthaanas are the stages reached by the soul through the appearance of good qualities
3. The omniscient supreme souls have defined gunasthaanakas as indicators of the disposition of the soul, which is experiencing the effects of the rise, suppression, annihilation, suppression-cumannihilation of delusion-causing karmas.
4. Aachaarya Nemichandra defined ‘gunasthaanaka' in verses 3 and 8 of his 'Gommatasaara' as being the fluctuating stages of the faith and conduct of the soul caused by moha (delusion and yoga {the sum total of the actions of mind, speech and body).
Thus, the gunasthaana is the indicator of the true nature of the qualities of the soul, which have arisen. Ordinarily, qualities like knowledge, etc. have endless aspects. Hence, there ought to be endless gunasthaanas. But since these aspects would be incomprehensible to the normal human, fourteen gunasthaanas are used to explain the endless aspects in brief, from the gross point of view.
Of these fourteen gunasthaanas, the first three are in the avanata under-developed) stage. And the next eleven are in the unnata {upright and lofty and praagatishiila {developing stage.
The term 'fourteen jiivasthaana' (stages of living beings found in fourth aphorism of the fourteenth chapter of the Samavayanga Suutra is better known as the 'fourteen gunasthaana/gunasthaanaka.'
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