The Brahma Sūtras present mokṣa as the central fruit of Brahma‑jñāna, the direct knowledge of Brahman. Liberation is described as the cessation of rebirth and the end of all sorrow and limitation, grounded in the insight that the individual self is not truly bound but only appears so through ignorance. This freedom is characterized both negatively, as freedom from sin, evil, and bondage, and positively, as abiding in Brahman—eternal, unchanging, and blissful. Scriptural statements that the knower of Brahman “does not return” are taken to indicate a final, irreversible release from saṃsāra rather than a temporary or partial state.

A sustained line of argument in the Sūtras is that ritual action (karma) cannot by itself yield such liberation. All actions are finite and produce finite, perishable results, whereas mokṣa is unborn, eternal, and not produced. Duties and rituals are granted a preparatory role: they purify the mind and make it fit for knowledge, but the direct means to liberation is knowledge alone. Devotion and meditation are similarly treated as crucial aids that steady and refine the mind, enabling it to assimilate the teaching of non‑duality, yet they do not replace knowledge as the decisive factor.

The nature of this knowledge is presented as the recognition that the individual self and Brahman are not ultimately different. The Sūtras examine Upaniṣadic phrases such as “attaining Brahman,” “going to Brahman,” or “dwelling in Brahman,” and interpret statements of apparent difference as figurative, arising from prior ignorance. Liberation is thus not the production of a new state, but the removal of false identification with the body‑mind complex and the disclosure of the ever‑free Self. In this sense, mokṣa is the revelation of what has always been the case, rather than a journey to a distant goal.

The texts also distinguish different modalities of this freedom. Liberation while living (jīvanmukti) is acknowledged: the knower of Brahman, even while embodied, is no longer truly bound by karma, much as a roasted seed can no longer sprout. Residual karmas already in operation explain the continued existence of the body, but accumulated and future karmas are said to be destroyed by knowledge. With the fall of the body comes final release (videhamukti), with no possibility of return. For those devoted to meditation on a qualified (saguṇa) Brahman, the Sūtras describe a gradual path (krama‑mukti) through higher realms culminating in complete wisdom and non‑return, whereas those who realize the attributeless Brahman here and now do not “go” anywhere, since their attainment is simply the end of ignorance.