Advaita Vedānta understands mokṣa as the direct realization that the innermost Self (Ātman) is not different from Brahman, the absolute, non-dual reality. From this standpoint, liberation is not the acquisition of a new state but the recognition of what has always been the case, obscured only by ignorance (avidyā). Bondage and saṃsāra arise through superimposition (adhyāsa), the habitual mistake of identifying consciousness with body, mind, and personality. When this error is removed, it becomes clear that the true Self was never bound, never touched by change, fear, or sorrow. Thus, mokṣa is described as abiding in one’s own nature as pure awareness, often characterized as sat–cit–ānanda, being-consciousness-bliss. Because it pertains to the ever-free Self rather than to any transient mental state, this liberation is held to be permanent and without degrees once true knowledge has dawned.

The path to such realization is centered on knowledge (jñāna) rather than on ritual or action. Preparatory disciplines, sometimes summarized as the fourfold qualifications (sādhana-catuṣṭaya), cultivate discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal, dispassion toward worldly and even heavenly enjoyments, a set of inner virtues such as calmness, self-control, forbearance, faith, and concentration, and an intense longing for liberation (mumukṣutva). On this foundation, the seeker engages in śravaṇa, systematic listening to the Upaniṣadic teaching from a competent teacher; manana, reflective inquiry to remove intellectual doubts; and nididhyāsana, deep contemplative assimilation that loosens ingrained patterns of misidentification. Karma-yoga and devotion (bhakti) are valued as means to purify the mind and make it fit for this knowledge, yet they are not regarded as direct causes of mokṣa itself, which arises only through self-knowledge.

When this non-dual knowledge becomes firm, liberation is said to be complete even while the body still lives, a condition known as jīvanmukti. In this state, the apparent individual may continue to act in the world, but without a sense of personal doership or attachment, and without being inwardly affected by pleasure and pain. The residual effects of past actions (prārabdha karma) may continue until the body falls, but they no longer bind, since the root ignorance that sustained the sense of a separate self has been destroyed. With the death of the body, there is no further embodiment or return to saṃsāra, a finality sometimes referred to as videhamukti. From the highest standpoint, however, even the notions of bondage and liberation are ultimately sublated, for Brahman, as pure consciousness, is ever-free and untouched by the play of ignorance and realization.