Asrava (āsrava "influx") is one of the tattva or the fundamental reality of the world as per the Jain philosophy.
It refers to the influence of body and mind causing the soul to generate karma.
[1] Out that the seven, the four—influx (āsrava), bondage (bandha), stoppage (saṃvara) and release (nirjarā)—pertain to the karmic process.
Champat Rai Jain in his book, The Key of Knowledge writes:[7] To begin with āsrava, the first thing to grasp is that there can be no bondage of pure mental abstractions, or purely wordy concepts; the word signifies some kind of real fetters, not, indeed, consisting in chains of iron, but of some very subtle and fine kind of matter.
The bondage of soul must, therefore, be the bondage of matter, the only substance which is known to enter into interaction with souls, and the obtainment of freedom must consequently imply the removal of the particles of this foreign material from the constitution of the ego.There are two kinds of influx, namely:[8]