Adhyāsa
Adhyāsa · adhi-āsa, “superimposition”
Grammar: masculine noun, from the root as (to throw, to place) with the prefix adhi (upon): “a placing upon”. The Purāṇa’s own gloss is “mistaking what is not that for that”.
Meaning: superimposition; the error by which, through ajñāna, the body, the senses and their qualities are taken to be the ātmā, and doership, birth and death are placed on the ātmā, which is free of them.
In the scriptures: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa shows how adhyāsa brings saṃsāra and how it ends.
Maitreya tells Vidura: when the moon is reflected in water, the trembling of the water seems to be in the moon though it is not; in the same way the qualities of the body and the other non-self things seem to be in the ātmā, which is pure awareness. When the seeker withdraws from the sense of being the doer, receives the grace of Vāsudeva and offers bhakti to him, this adhyāsa of the qualities of the non-self upon the ātmā goes away slowly but surely (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 7).
Bhagavān Kapila teaches his mother Devahūti that the Purusha mistook Prakṛti, quite unlike him, for his own self, and while the guṇas of Prakṛti act, he took their doership on himself. The Purusha is a non-doer, free, the witness, whose nature is bliss; but through that adhyāsa there came to him saṃsāra, the stream of birth and death; from doership, the bondage of karma; and from that, the loss of freedom (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapter 26).
Śuka tells Parīkshit that the bliss of the ātmā was present in Bharata (Jaḍabharata); so in him there was no sense of “mine” in the pleasures and pains of the pairs of opposites, cold and heat, honour and dishonour, and no adhyāsa of “I” in the body (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 5, Chapter 9).
Consoling his mother Diti and his kin, Hiraṇyakaśipu says that the ātmā has no real contact with the body, yet appears to through ajñāna. By this adhyāsa, the mahātmās say, the ātmā seems to meet and part with things dear and not dear, to be a doer of karmas, to enjoy saṃsāra, the fruit of karma, to be born and to die, to grieve in many ways, and to lack viveka (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 2).
Śrī Kṛshṇa tells Uddhava that for the body and the rest the guṇas are the material cause and dharma and adharma the instrumental cause. In ajñāna one wrongly takes the body, made by these, to be one’s own nature; but when ātma-jñāna arises, that adhyāsa ceases (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 11, Chapter 28).
Related terms: Ajñāna · Avidyā · Adhishṭhāna · Ātmā · Ahaṅkāra · Māyā
Sources
- Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 3, Chapters 7, 26; Skandha 5, Chapter 9; Skandha 7, Chapter 2; Skandha 11, Chapter 28