Dvaita Vedānta, associated with Madhvācārya, stands apart within the Vedāntic landscape by insisting on an uncompromising dualism between the individual self (ātman) and the supreme reality (Brahman, identified with Viṣṇu/Nārāyaṇa). Where Advaita sees the apparent difference between self and Brahman as a product of ignorance, and Viśiṣṭādvaita understands souls and world as inseparable attributes or “body” of Brahman, Dvaita maintains that these distinctions are real, eternal, and never ultimately sublated. The individual soul never becomes identical with Brahman, not even in the highest state of liberation; dependence on God is complete, but identity is never shared. In this way, Dvaita gives ontological primacy to difference rather than unity, without denying the soul’s profound reliance on the divine.

This commitment to real difference is articulated through the doctrine of pañca-bheda, the fivefold distinction: between God and individual souls, God and matter, one soul and another, one material entity and another, and between souls and matter. Other Vedānta schools, even when they affirm devotion and a personal God, ultimately subordinate such distinctions to a deeper unity, whereas Dvaita treats them as the very structure of reality. The world (jagat) is therefore fully real and not an illusion or mere appearance; it is eternally dependent on God but never reduced to a play of māyā. Brahman is understood as a personal, qualified deity, endowed with infinite auspicious attributes, and the notion of “nirguṇa” is read not as “without attributes” but as “free from defects.”

The vision of liberation that flows from this metaphysics is likewise distinctive. For Dvaita, mokṣa consists in eternal vision and loving service of Viṣṇu in His abode, with the soul retaining its individuality and its status as a dependent being. There is no merging or absorption that erases the line between worshipper and Worshipped; rather, fulfillment lies in unending communion grounded in difference. Bhakti, supported by right knowledge of God’s supremacy and completed by divine grace, is the central means to this goal, while other disciplines such as ritual action and philosophical inquiry are seen as preparatory and subordinate. In contrast, Advaita privileges liberating knowledge of non-duality, and Viśiṣṭādvaita integrates knowledge and action into a theistic devotional framework.

Dvaita also articulates a real gradation among souls, holding that they are intrinsically of different types: some are fit for liberation, some bound to ongoing saṃsāra, and some destined for a state of utter darkness. This hierarchy is not merely empirical but built into the very nature of souls, and it persists even in perfection, so that equality of status with God is never imagined. Other major Vedānta systems do not accept such an eternal classification, tending instead to see all souls as sharing a common ultimate possibility. Taken together, these features reveal Dvaita as a tradition that treasures relationship over identity, difference over fusion, and a personal, devotional bond with the divine over any aspiration to ontological oneness.