Dvaita Vedānta, systematized by Madhvacharya, presents a rigorously dualistic vision of reality in which God, individual souls, and the world are all eternally distinct. Brahman is identified specifically with Viṣṇu, the supreme, independent reality, while souls (jīvas) and the world (jagat or prakṛti) are real yet dependent entities. This school insists that difference (bheda) is not a temporary appearance but an everlasting feature of existence. It articulates this through the doctrine of five real and eternal distinctions (pañca‑bheda): between God and soul, God and matter, one soul and another, soul and matter, and one material entity and another. The world is therefore affirmed as real, not as illusion or mere projection, and creation is understood as a genuine manifestation of divine power rather than a superimposition born of ignorance.

Within this framework, individual souls are countless, eternal, and irreducibly distinct from one another and from God, even in the highest spiritual state. Souls are always dependent on Viṣṇu and never become identical with Him; their individuality is not a problem to be overcome but a truth to be rightly understood. Liberation (mokṣa) is described as eternal service and blissful contemplation in the presence of Viṣṇu, where the soul fully realizes its dependence and enjoys unending proximity to the Lord while retaining its unique identity. Devotion (bhakti) thus becomes the central spiritual path, supported by right knowledge and righteous conduct, and fruition comes through divine grace rather than through any claim to ontological oneness with Brahman.

In contrast to Advaita Vedānta, which teaches that only non‑dual Brahman is ultimately real and that the world and individuality are, at the deepest level, neither absolutely real nor absolutely unreal, Dvaita maintains that God, souls, and world are all absolutely real. Advaita interprets the apparent multiplicity as arising from māyā and avidyā, to be sublated in the realization of one’s identity with nirguṇa Brahman; Dvaita rejects this, holding that difference is never overcome and that there is no merging of the soul into an undifferentiated absolute. Where Advaita sees knowledge (jñāna) of one’s true identity as the direct means to liberation, Dvaita emphasizes a permanent dual relationship of loving devotion to a personal Lord.

When set beside Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, which upholds a qualified non‑dualism in which souls and matter are real yet function as the body or attributes of Brahman, Dvaita draws a sharper metaphysical line. For Viśiṣṭādvaita, there is an overarching unity in which all diversity is contained as modes of the one Brahman; for Dvaita, God, souls, and matter remain distinct substances, related through dependence and control but never as parts of a single ontological whole. Both traditions revere Viṣṇu as supreme and center spiritual life on devotion and eternal service, yet Dvaita underscores an unbridgeable difference and hierarchy between God and the soul, even in the state of liberation. In this way, Dvaita Vedānta offers a vision of spiritual fulfillment grounded not in dissolving difference, but in eternally recognizing and lovingly honoring it.