Samayasāra presents the soul (jīva) as pure consciousness (caitanya), whose very essence is knowing and perceiving. It is described as an eternal, indestructible substance, not produced or destroyed, and fundamentally distinct from body, senses, mind, and karmic matter. From this standpoint, the soul is formless and not composed of physical substances, and its defining characteristic is consciousness, which sets it apart from matter. The text emphasizes that the soul is the knower and seer, the detached witness of all modes, including its own changing states, without itself truly undergoing change in its essence.

At the same time, Samayasāra distinguishes between the soul’s pure nature and its empirical appearance. In its pure state (śuddha jīva), the soul is inherently free from all karmic bondage and modifications, intrinsically possessing knowledge, perception, bliss, and energy. Yet, from the worldly or empirical standpoint, the soul appears as the bound or empirical soul (vyavahāra jīva), seemingly entangled in karma and experiencing pleasure, pain, birth, and death. These associations with karma, passions, and external conditions are regarded as adventitious; they belong to the soul only from the empirical perspective, not from the ultimate one.

The text further holds that the soul’s inherent purity is unadulterated, even when it appears obscured by karmic matter. Bondage and impurity arise from misidentification with what is non-self, while the soul itself remains, in its deepest nature, pure, blissful, and perfect. Liberation is portrayed as the soul’s realization of this true, pure nature, in which its capacities for knowledge, perception, bliss, and energy are fully manifest. Thus, Samayasāra invites a vision of the jīva as the unchanging principle of consciousness, eternally distinct from all non-conscious substances and their changing modes, and calls for a shift from the empirical view of the soul to the insight into its timeless, luminous essence.