In Jain दर्शन, jīva is not an appearance alone. It is a real, enduring substance (dravya) with the qualities of consciousness, knowing, and experiencing. What changes are its states and modifications (paryāya), not its basic nature.

1) Where is this dravya found?

A dravya is not “found” as a physical object like a stone. In Jainism, jīva is known by its manifestations:

• awareness
• knowing
• happiness and suffering
• intention
• bondage and liberation

So the substance is recognized through its lakṣaṇa and paryāya, not by gross sensory inspection like matter.

2) Is liberation of the substance, or only of its appearances?

In Jain philosophy, mokṣa is the liberation of the jīva from karma, not the destruction of the jīva itself.

• The substance remains the same jīva.
• The bonded condition ends.
• The modes of bondage, ignorance, and suffering cease.
• The jīva then manifests its own pure nature: infinite knowledge, infinite vision, infinite bliss, and infinite energy.

So liberation is not merely a change in appearance, nor is it the annihilation of the self. It is the removal of karmic obscuration from an enduring conscious substance.

3) Is an enduring jīva necessary?

From the Jain standpoint, yes, because:

• memory presupposes continuity,
• karmic bondage and karmic fruit presuppose a bearer,
• ethical responsibility presupposes a real subject of action and experience,
• liberation presupposes the same conscious continuum becoming free.

If there were only changing aggregates with no enduring jīva, then:

• who binds karma?
• who experiences its result?
• who becomes liberated?

Jainism says the changing acts of knowing belong to a knowing substance. The acts vary; the knower remains as the underlying reality.

4) Can you find an unchanging knower apart from changing acts of knowing?

In Jain analysis, the knower is inferred through the continuity of consciousness.

It is true that the content of knowing changes:

• one moment perception,
• another memory,
• another judgment,
• another delusion,
• another clarity.

But these changing knowings are not self-standing without a conscious subject. The Jain position is:

• knowledge is a mode of jīva
• jīva is the substratum of knowledge
• the substance persists while modes change

Thus, the unchanging element is not a fixed mental image or ego, but the conscious nature that underlies all changing states.

5) About the concern of reifying self

Jainism avoids both extremes:

• it does not say the self is a permanent material-like object,
• and it does not reduce the self to mere momentary aggregates.

Instead, it teaches anādi-ananta jīva: beginningless in worldly existence, yet capable of ending bondage through right faith, right knowledge, and right conduct.

So the Jain answer is:

Yes, experience changes continually, but those changes presuppose a real conscious dravya. Liberation is the freedom of that jīva from karmic obscuration, not the liberation of mere appearances alone.