All living organisms, with their souls defiled by karma, have piecemeal and fragmented knowledge, intuition and energy, possesses perverted faith and embodied existence, experience joy and grief and a limited life span and are therefore, subject to cycles of birth and death. Karma infects and defiles all worldly organisms and veils, vitiates or obstructs the above mentioned eight qualities of a pure soul and keeps it away from its supreme state of existence. Accordingly there are eight primary, main (mula prakṛiti) types of karma:
1
Jñānāvarṇa karma
knowledge obscuring karma
obscures the pure and perfect knowledge.
2
Darsanāvarṇa karma
intuition obscuring karma
obscures the pure and perfect intuition.
3
Vedanīya karma
feeling producing karma
holds up the self generated bliss and produces pleasures and pain, joy and grief in worldly life.
4
Mohanīya karma
deluding karma
produces delusion, meta physical and ethical.
Prevents the innate ability of belief in truth. Destroys equanimity of conduct.5
Āyuṣya karma
life span determining karma
determines the biological species as well as the duration of life-span.
6
Nāma karma
body making karma
embodies the bodyless soul and determines the diversities and individual traits.
7
Gotra karma
status determining karma
determines the status and family conditions.
8
Antarāya karma
abstracts/suppresses the spiritual energy.[5]