Kevala-jñāna

Kevala-jñāna, “isolated” or “absolute knowledge”, is in Jainism the perfect knowledge of the soul freed from karma: an omniscience that knows all things, in all their aspects, past, present and future, directly and at once. Jains hold that knowledge is the very nature of the soul (jīva). It is not acquired from outside, but obscured by karmic matter that has bound itself to the soul through passion and harmful action.

As the karmic veils are removed, through vows, austerity, meditation and the cultivation of right faith, right knowledge and right conduct, the soul’s knowledge shines forth. When the last obscuring karma is destroyed, the soul becomes a kevalin, an omniscient one. According to tradition, Mahāvīra attained kevala-jñāna after more than twelve years of austerities, and taught for some thirty years before his death and final liberation.

At death the liberated soul rises to the top of the universe, where it abides in endless knowledge, perception, bliss and energy, as an individual soul, not merged in any absolute. The Jain ideal of omniscience is thus unitive in the sense that the soul knows everything, but not in the sense that it becomes one with a divine reality.