According to the Abhidharmakośabhāṣya, the Ābhidharmikas say that when someone born in the realm of desire (kāmadhātu) regards Brahman as a sentient being and as permanent, the conceptions are not erroneous views but are false knowledge. These conceptions are not the grasping of a self (ātman) or of things possessed by a self (ātmīya). They are applicable neither to a view of the self (satkāyadṛṣṭi), nor to a view that grasps the extremes of permanence and annihilation (antagrāhadṛṣṭi) founded on the view of the self. A sentient being does not exist in and of itself, and is merely real by way of a conception like the self. But the statement that “I exist” is correct in the world. The false knowledge that non-existence is taken for existence is interpreted to be undefiled by the Abhidharmamahāvibhāṣā. It has an aspect that does not exist in an object, as if a branchless tree is mistaken for a person. The Abhidharmamahāvibhāṣā mentions that factors tending toward the fluxes (sāsrava) are not pure. Moreover, the factors that have both mental disturbances (kleśa) and a perceptual object that tends toward the fluxes are defilements, but the factors that have only a perceptual object tending toward the fluxes have some purity, in which case they are called non-defilements.
