In Pravachanasara, true knowledge (samyag jnana) is presented as the soul’s clear apprehension of its own pure nature, distinct from body, mind, karmic matter, and all that is non-self. It is the soul’s direct awareness of itself as a conscious, knowing substance, free from the distortions produced by attachment, aversion, and passion. Such knowledge is not merely conceptual or discursive; it is immediate and self-evident, revealing both itself and its object without reliance on the senses or external validation. In this state, the soul recognizes itself as pure consciousness, not as the changing modifications or worldly roles with which it is ordinarily identified.

This true knowledge is characterized by freedom from delusion (mithyatva) and from the karmic veils that obscure the soul’s luminosity. It is non-erroneous and certain, a mode of cognition that is steady and undisturbed by likes and dislikes. Kundakunda contrasts it with conventional, worldly knowledge, which is concerned with external objects and transient states, and which remains entangled in subject–object duality. True knowledge, by contrast, is non-relational in the sense that it is fundamentally the soul knowing itself, even while it may also encompass a right understanding of other substances as they are.

Pravachanasara also links true knowledge inseparably with right faith (samyag darshana) and right conduct (samyag charitra). When wrong belief and karmic obscurations are gradually removed, right faith arises, and with it the possibility of knowledge that aligns with reality rather than with illusion. This purified knowledge naturally supports conduct that is in harmony with the soul’s nature, forming a unified path oriented toward liberation. In this way, samyag jnana is not an isolated intellectual achievement but the living expression of the soul’s own inherent clarity, manifesting as right seeing, right knowing, and right living.