There ‘innumerable delivered souls exist and are to be there for ages that never were begun and which never close’. A śloka describes the qualities of the Siddha thus:
‘Omniscience, boundless vision, illimitable righteousness, infinite strength, perfect bliss, indestructibility, existence without form, a body that is neither light nor heavy, such are the characteristics of the Siddha.’
As a soul passes from stage to stage, it gains the three jewels,[1] and the possession of these ensures the attainment of mokṣa.
The writer was recently discussing these fourteen steps with some Jaina friends, and it was most interesting to notice the way they realized that Christians not only believed in an upward, heavenly path, but also in the constant companionship of a Guide who held their hands and steadied their feet over the difficult places. The Jaina of course, denying as they do a Creator, are deprived of the belief in a heavenly Father, who watching over us ‘neither slumbers nor sleeps’. The vital difference on this point of the two faiths is well illustrated by the contrast between Christian evening hymns such as:
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide:
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.’
—and the following Māgadhī śloka which many devout Jaina repeat after their evening reading from the sacred books:
‘The soul is the maker and the non-maker, and itself makes happiness and misery, is its own friend and its own foe, decides its own condition good or evil, is its own river Veyaraṇī.[2] My soul is my Kuḍasāmalī.[3] The soul is the cow from which all desires can be milked, the soul is my heavenly garden.’
