Article: Types of bodies

In Jain belief the soul or self – jīva – travels through the endless cycle of rebirth during which it is born into various bodies, which are classified into types of:

• being or body
• sense-being.

These bodies live in the world space of the Jain universe – loka. The soul’s journey ends when it has reached such a level of spiritual progress that it becomes enlightened and is liberated from the cycle of birth – saṃsāra. For Jains, the purpose of living is to advance spiritually so that one’s soul travels a little nearer to liberation – mokṣa.

Unliberated souls are born into a succession of various bodies in different parts of the Three Worlds that make up world space. There are four states – gatis – into which they can be born. The world into which they are born and the body they have in that birth or lifetime depend on their spiritual condition. This is largely determined by the karma that has become attached to the soul over the course of the previous life and also, to some extent, the karma from previous lives. A soul may therefore be born in a hell in one rebirth and in a heaven in the next – it may not move among the different worlds in a straightforward way, going either all up in succession or all down in succession.

The more advanced a soul’s spirituality, the higher the world into which it is born. However, being born a human being in the Middle World is better than being born a god into one of the heavens of the Upper World. This is because only human beings can reach omniscience – kevala-jñāna – which is a late, necessary stage on the way to liberation, and human beings can live only in the Middle World.