The Bhagavati Sutra portrays the soul (jīva) as an eternal, conscious substance that is intrinsically pure yet found in ever-changing states. Its defining attribute is conscious activity—knowing and perceiving—through which it is distinguished from matter. Souls are innumerable and distinct, and they wander through a vast range of embodiments, from one-sensed beings to complex five-sensed forms such as humans, celestial beings, and infernal beings. In its deepest nature, the soul is endowed with limitless knowledge, perception, bliss, and energy, but these qualities are obscured rather than destroyed. This obscuration explains how an inherently luminous reality can appear bound, limited, and subject to suffering.

Karma, in this text, is not treated as a mere moral abstraction but as an extremely subtle form of matter (pudgala) that adheres to the soul. Through activities of mind, speech, and body, especially when charged with passions and intentions, karmic particles flow toward the soul and bind to it. The Sutra analyzes this bondage with great precision, speaking of different types of karma, their duration, intensity, and quantity, all of which determine the concrete experiences the soul undergoes. It presents an eightfold classification of karma, including knowledge-obscuring, perception-obscuring, deluding, feeling-producing, life-determining, body-determining, status-determining, and power-hindering forms. These karmas shape not only rebirth in various realms but also lifespan, bodily constitution, social standing, and spiritual capacity.

Within this framework, the relationship between soul and karma is both rigorously causal and ethically charged. Present conditions are seen as the fruition of past karmic bonds, yet new bondage is constantly being forged or checked by current choices. The Sutra describes the processes of karmic influx (āsrava) and bondage (bandha), as well as the means of stopping new influx (saṃvara) and shedding accumulated karma (nirjarā). Right faith, right knowledge, and disciplined conduct gradually reduce the hold of karma, allowing the soul’s native qualities to shine forth with increasing clarity. Liberation is depicted as a progressive purification culminating in omniscience (kevala-jñāna) while still embodied, and finally in the state of the siddha, where all karmic matter has been cast off and the soul abides in unimpeded knowledge and bliss.

Throughout, a radical dualism is maintained between jīva and ajīva: the conscious, knowing principle and the realm of matter, including karmic matter. Bondage is understood as an unnatural association between these two fundamentally different realities, while spiritual practice is the art of disentangling them. The Bhagavati Sutra thus offers a vision in which every moment of awareness and action participates in a finely grained moral cosmos, where even the subtlest intention leaves a trace in the soul’s journey.