Outlines of Indian Philosophy c19.73

c19.73

The Sāṅkhya-Yoga, like the Sautrāntika but unlike the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, believes that perception is effected by means of a psychic sign, viz. an image or idea (ākāra) of the object in question. The image is not transferred to the buddhi and found in it as may be supposed, but the buddhi itself assumes the form of the object, when a suitable stimulus is received from outside. The modification of the evolvent buddhi, viz. vṛtti, is a characteristic not only of perception but also of all forms of consciousness, and when it is inspired by spirit, experience results. The psychic apparatus as a whole mediates between the puruṣa and the outside world thereby securing for the former the experiences of life (bhoga) or, if the time for it is ripe, final freedom (apavarga) through right knowledge (viveka). The details of the process of knowing are as follows: The object first impresses one or other of the senses, and the jñāna that arises then is quite vague and general. It is ‘bare awareness’ (ālocana-mātra) and marks the nirvikalpaka stage. The first stage in perception does not accordingly refer, as in the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika (p. 251), to the isolated and discriminate particular. It becomes properly explicated later when interpreted by the manas, and is therefore termed ‘determinate’ or savikalpaka. Pratyakṣa does not accordingly start here from detached elements and synthesize them, but from an indistinguishable whole into which it introduces order afterwards.² This completes the process from the objective standpoint; but there follow two other stages before perception is psychologically fully explained. The first is the appropriation of the experience by the ahaṃ-kāra or the reference of it to the self in question. If now the perception is to lead to any action the buddhi intervenes and decides upon what action has to follow and issues instructions, so to say, to the proper motor organ (karmendriya), the result being either some action or desistence from it. The buddhi thus corresponds to the will-aspect of conscious life. If we use a single term—antaḥ-karaṇa—for the last three elements of the psychic apparatus, we see how the internal organ in one or other of its phases is engaged, when once the senses have been stimulated, in reacting to the stimulus. The order in which the psychic organs function, it will be seen, is the reverse of that in which they appear in the evolutionary scheme given above. In internal perception such as that of pain or pleasure, as also in mediate knowledge, the process is exactly the same; only the co-operation of the external senses (jñānendriya) is not required and they do not therefore function then. This analysis of the psychic process, which takes perception as an increasing differentiation in a presented whole, is very much sounder than that of the Nyāya Vaiśeṣika; but owing to the denial in the doctrine of direct interaction between the buddhi and spirit, there is even here a difficulty in understanding how experience emerges all at once out of a purely physical or physiological process. The illustration of a glowing iron ball is not apt, for the iron ball and fire are actually in relation there unlike the buddhi and the puruṣa here.