The Dravyasamgraha presents reality as composed of six fundamental substances, each eternal and distinct, yet mutually interdependent in sustaining the cosmos. First among these is **jīva**, the conscious substance characterized by knowledge, perception, and the capacity to experience pleasure, pain, and other inner states. Jīva is the principle of life and awareness, the presence that turns mere mechanism into living experience. It is through jīva that the universe becomes luminous from within, capable of knowing itself rather than remaining a merely external arrangement of forces and forms.

In contrast stands **pudgala**, matter, the non-conscious substance that constitutes the physical world. Pudgala possesses form and the sensible qualities of color, taste, smell, and touch, and it encompasses both gross bodies and subtler configurations such as karmic matter. Where jīva is awareness without material form, pudgala is form without awareness, yet the two are deeply intertwined in embodied existence. Their association and eventual disentanglement provide the stage upon which spiritual bondage and liberation unfold.

The text further speaks of **dharma-dravya**, the medium of motion, and **adharma-dravya**, the medium of rest. These are not moral qualities here, but subtle, passive conditions that make movement and stillness possible for both souls and matter. Dharma-dravya provides the necessary condition that allows entities to move, while adharma-dravya provides the condition that allows them to come to rest. They do not cause motion or rest by themselves; rather, they function as the cosmic “field” within which motion and repose can meaningfully occur.

Surrounding and accommodating all of this is **ākāśa**, space, the substance that offers room for every other dravya to exist and operate. Without ākāśa, neither the conscious nor the material, neither motion nor rest, would have any locus in which to manifest. Finally, **kāla**, time, is the substance that allows for duration, sequence, and transformation. Through kāla, the modifications of other substances become ordered as before and after, giving structure to change and continuity to existence. Taken together, these six dravyas form a finely articulated vision of reality in which consciousness, matter, motion, rest, space, and time are each honored as irreducible dimensions of what is.