Chapter VIII. The Meaning of Superimposition
Devotee: As far as possible! With my maximum effort, using the quality of intellect (buddhi) granted by You, I
am putting them into action.
Swami: What do you mean by “as far as possible”? For devotees like you, what other task is greater than this?
Why is it not possible? You need only faith and will. With them, it should not be difficult at all to carry out the
duty.
Devotee: Swami, You Yourself have said that even when there is faith and even when one has the will, putting
things into practice may be difficult for want of favourable circumstances and also because the meaning of things
may not be grasped clearly.
Swami: Oh! That means that want of both favourable circumstances and understanding are bothering you! Well if
you have not understood, ask, and if you have no favourable atmosphere, tell me what the obstacle is.
Devotee: Doubt is the biggest obstacle; what can be bigger than that? Even after hearing so much, the demon
catches hold of me on and off. I don’t know why.
Swami: The first reason for that is lack of faith in yourself, faith born out of the conviction that you are really the
embodiment of the Atma (Atma-swarupa).
The second reason? Taking the divinity in humanity as only humanity
and getting lost in the pursuit of sense enjoyment. These demons pounce on you for just these two reasons. In-
stead, if you establish yourself in God, understanding the divinity in people as divinity itself, this demon of doubt
will not attack you. You simply must give up this superimposition (adhyasa), which makes you mix things up.
Devotee: There! Now and then you use unintelligible words! That makes me even more confused, Swami!
Swami: I will never tell you unintelligible words. You have no power to understand, so you feel worried. I use them, really, in order to make you understand their meaning! Now, in what I told you, which is the dif cult word?
Devotee: You used the word superimposition (adhyasa). What does it mean, Swami?
Swami: What? You don’t know its meaning! “Seeing one form and taking it to be another, super-imposing one thing upon another.”
Devotee: How is that? On which object do we super-impose another? Tell me.
Swami: Well, seeing a rope and imagining it to be a snake; seeing waves of hot air in the sun and imagining them to be horses; seeing a mirror shining in the sun and taking it to be a lamp, ....
Devotee: But what do I see and what do I take it to be?
Swami: You see the Supreme Atma (Param-atma) in this form of nature (prakriti) and take it to be the mere world
(prapancha), and you are afraid. It is on account of this delusion that you have become the victim of all these
varieties of weakness and are declining through doubt and illusion.
If you see it right, the delusion will vanish; the
fear will disappear. The faith that it is the Supreme Atma will be firmly and boldly established in you.
To get that firmness, the lamp of discrimination (viveka) is necessary. How much a person suffers as long as the rope is seen
as a snake!
How much is the fear! The delusion! Can it be realised how all that vanished as soon as it was seen
in the light? Similarly, these doubts and delusions will also vanish unawares, as soon as you know that nature is
Supreme Atma.
Imposing a delusion on a delusion, imagining one object to be another, this is called superimposition (adhyasa), my boy!
Continued...
