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called sensuous perception If this experience arises from the mind alone, it may be called a psychic experience Both of these are included in Matijñāna For such perceptual cognition to be possible we must postulate the capacity of the soul to perceive 24
The senses themselves do not perceive, they are only like windows through which the soul perceives, and this perception is not of an undifferentiated, indescribable particular It is a case of differentiated cognition 25 It is always determinate, revealing itself as well as the object In fact, alongside the material or paudgalika indi iya, bhāvendriya or psychuc sense has to be postulated Bhāvendi ya consists of labdhı or capacity and upayoga or apprehension 28 What is more, all this mediation between knowledge and the object is not necessarily required as an aid to knowledge to reveal the object Knowledge is spontaneously capable of revealing all the objects as is the case with Kevalajñāna where the soul in its state of purity simultaneously knows everything In ordinary life the spontaneity of the soul or knowledge is obscured by the working of karma That which is described as the functioning of the physical senses and their contact with objects is thus not an aid to knowledge but really part of an obscuring apparatus Such sensory functioning becomes an occasion for the manifestation of knowledge when there is a temporary and partial cessation and subsidence of the obscuring karma Even with open eyes a man may fail to see Even with closed eyes one may see quite clearly as in clairvoyance There is no question of the senses somehow reproducing the form of the object and communicating it to the mind to judge The mind knows and judges at the same time and the senses function by occasionally ceasing to hinder the perceptual power of the soul
Experience or pratyaksa is defined by its character of vividness or varśadya which is explained as consisting in the fact that pratyaksa is not mediated by any other kind of cognition The result is that in it the object is cognized as an immediately given particular, as 'this' It is knowledge by acquaintance, not knowledge by signs, representations or description 27 As already
