Viparyaya - The Reversal of Reality
- Daniel McKenzie
- Sep 13
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 27
In Vedanta, viparyaya is not just error, but reversal — the turning upside-down of reality under the power of māyā. Instead of seeing the Self as limitless awareness and the world as dependent appearance, the order is reversed: the body-mind is taken as “I,” and the world as solid and independent.
The rope–snake metaphor shows this well. The rope is real, the snake unreal. Ignorance veils the rope (avarana), and projection supplies the snake (vikshepa). The mind then reverses truth: the unreal snake is treated as real, the real rope is hidden. Likewise, in samsara, the eternal Self is overlooked, and the transient body and world are grasped as truth.
Shankara's Adhyasa Bhashya describes bondage as precisely this reversal — attributing the qualities of the Self to the non-Self and vice versa. For the ordinary person, this reversal is constant: the finite is taken as infinite, dependence as independence, mithya as satya. For the jnani, viparyaya is gone. Appearances of duality remain, but are never taken as ultimately real.
Thus viparyaya is the deep inversion of vision sustained by ignorance. Vedanta corrects it by revealing reality as it is: the Self is satya, ever free; the world is mithyā, dependent and transient.
Root & Meaning
Vi (apart, contrary) + pari (around, all sides) + -yaya (going around, change, alternation).
Viparyaya = inversion, reversal, erroneous cognition.
Scriptural References
Yoga Sutra 1.8: “Viparyaya is false knowledge, based on form, which is not as it appears.”
Shankara's Adhyasa Bhashya: defines bondage as adhyasa (superimposition), i.e., viparyaya — reversal of Self and not-Self.
Bhagavad Gita 18.22: “That knowledge which clings to one body as if it were the whole… know it as tamasic.”
Traditional View
Viparyaya is maya's power of reversal — flipping reality on its head.
Leads to adhyasa: attributing Self’s qualities to non-Self and vice versa.
Destroyed only by Self-knowledge (atma-jnana).
Vedantic Analysis
Mechanism: non-apprehension → misapprehension → reversal.
Example: rope is unseen, snake is projected, reality is inverted.
For the ajnani: “I am small, bound, lacking; the world is vast and real.”
For the jnani: reversal corrected — Self is limitless, world is mithya.
Common Misunderstandings
That viparyaya is just error of the senses: It is the global reversal of subject and object.
That meditation alone corrects viparyaya: Only shruti, unfolded by a teacher, removes it.
That viparyaya vanishes from appearances: Duality continues in vyavahara, just as the sun still seems to “rise” in the east even after we know the earth rotates. What ends for the jnani is not the appearance, but the mistake of taking the appearance as satya.
Vedantic Resolution
Viparyaya is maya's inversion of reality — the Self mistaken as finite, the world mistaken as real. Vedanta’s revelation reverses the reversal, restoring vision: the Self is satya, the world is mithya.
