Advaita, Nyaya, and the Perceptual Process

There are philosophers who argue that there can be no means to know whether there are real objects in the world, given that everything we experience arises in our minds and is contained in the mind itself. This is a philosophical position termed “Idealism.” There are many variants of Idealism, from the kind first proposed in the West by Berkeley (1685–1753) to the later variants known as Phenomenology and Existentialism, but they all fit into the broad category called ‘Idealism’, as they hold the world to be born out of subjective ideations and belief systems. The terms ‘Naïve Realism’ and ‘Idealism’ are fine when used to refer to certain philosophies of the West. But Śrī Chittaranjan Naik writes that it is wrong to label Nyāya as a kind of ‘Naïve Realism’ or ‘Advaita’ as a kind of ‘Idealism’ - which many authors fail to realize.

Advaita is not Idealism because it negates both the mind and the world. And, at the same time, the mind and the world are different. Advaita does not negate only the world and leave aside the mind to say that the world is ‘mind.’ There are twenty-four tattvas defined in Vedānta, and only four of them are internal instruments (antah-karaṇas comprising ahaṅkāra, citta, buddhi, and manaḥ), whereas the rest are external objects. The attributes of the internal instruments cannot transfer to the objects of the world. The world is not ‘mind’.

The objects of the mind, i.e., ideas and thought, have the characteristic of being determined by the individual’s will, whereas the objects of the world do not have the characteristic of being so determined. One cannot cook food by merely thinking about the food. In Advaita, the relations between words and objects are eternal, and each word denotes a specific kind of object with specific attributes. Without understanding this basic tenet of Advaita, it is wrong on the part of those authors to label Advaita as Idealism and thereby cause confusion.

In this world comprising various objects, all these objects may be the reflections (pratibimbas) of Brahman but they are true to the names they are known by. Hence, they are real. The world objects are all pratibimbas, having no existences by themselves but with their existences derived from, and entirely dependent on, the Bimba, which is Brahman, the Supreme and Sole Independent Existence. Without Brahman, the universe and its objects have no capacity to exist, just as in a mirror the reflections have no capacity to exist without there being objects.

Nyāya is not Naïve Realism. This is a caricature that has no bearing on Nyāya. The entire dichotomy between ‘images seen in perception’ and ‘unknowable objects out there in the world’ has been created by an incoherent hypothesis that perception takes place through the mediating mechanisms of the sensory network and the brain. The Nyāya (and Vedānta) theory of perception is based on the principle of contact between the subject and object, in which there is no chance of the reality of the world becoming ‘naïve.’ Nor is there in them a chance of the world becoming something other than what is seen. Therefore, the application of the term ‘Naïve Realism’ to Nyāya betrays a lack of knowledge of Nyāya.

The Perceptual Process in Indian Traditions

At the most primal level, perception is by the removal of the covering of maya over the individual self. In Advaita Vedānta, the covering of maya over the self is avidya or nescience. The removal of the nescience to allow the conscious light of the self to reveal external objects constitutes perception.

In the Indian tradition, perception is an active process in which the Self, as the Inner Controller, drives the senses towards their objects in accordance with the individual’s adrṣṭa.

On the removal of nescience, the self’s conscious light streams out to the object and envelopes it.

In this process, the mind assumes the form of the target object of cognition during a conceptual act. The form that the mind assumes in presenting an object to cognition is a vṛtti. The mind forms a vṛtti both when it constructs an object purely as a mental phenomenon as well as when it contacts an external object and envelopes it and assumes the form of the object. Perception is thus a composite process in which the self, the mind and the sense organs together participate to establish a contact with the object. The Nyāya text Tarka Saṅgrahaḥ explains it as follows: The self (ātman) contacts the mind (manas), the mind with the organ (indriya), and the organ with the object (viṣaya), and then perceptual knowledge takes place. This is a direct perception of the object and its quality too.

In Indian tradition, the attributes perceived of objects, such as color, taste are not subjective qualities but are objective qualities inherent in the objects themselves. This is in sharp contrast to the viewpoint of Contemporary Western tradition wherein they are subjective phenomenal qualities. In the Indian theory of perception, there is no transformation of the object in the process of presentation. Once the mind and sense organs contact the object and assume the form of the object by forming a vṛtti, there would be a conjunction of the mind, the sense organ, and the object at the very location of the object. There would be nothing in between the self and the object to hinder the conscious luminosity of the self from revealing the object in its true form.

The contingency of the mind and sense organs as distorting filters arise only when they have a defect hindering it from assuming the form of the object.

When such defects of the sense organs or the mind are absent, there would be nothing present in between the self and the object that can prevent the perception from revealing the object in a transparent and true manner. The perception of an object is in the actual spatial location where it exists and is instantaneous. There is no time-lag in perception. Śrī Chittaranjan Naik proposes an interesting experiment to prove this. One can refer to the wonderful book Natural Realism for further details.

In the case of touch, taste and smell, the (subtle) organs do not move out of the body, so the perception takes place at the location of the physical sense organs themselves when the objects come into contact with the physical sense organs of the gross body; whereas in the case of visual and auditory perceptions, the indriyas move out of the physical body to make contact with the object in external space.

While there are minor variations between the darśanas about the technicalities of perception, all the darśanas hold that perception takes place due to the contact of the (subtle) sense organs with the object. There is uniformity regarding perception being direct and revealing the object in its actual form through the contact of the consciousness with the object through the instrumentality of the sense organs and mind.

Such contact is instantaneous since the consciousness that appears within the body is the same Consciousness that exists without the limiting adjuncts of the body and which is in conjunction with all objects.

Hence, perception is nothing more than the removal of the covering of maya over the individual consciousness to reveal the conjunction that already exists with the object.

Authored by Dr. Pingali Gopal. Published by Brhat.index.php?title=Category:Social Sciences