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CHAPTER VII
SUPERNORMAL PERCEPTION
Introduction
The nature of empirical experience was discussed in the last chapter. It was, by the earlier philosophers, called parokşa. Later philosophers, trying to adjust the original views with the prevailing concepts of pratyaksa and parokşa called it sarnvyavahāra pratyaksa and made it arise from the contact of the sense organs and the manas. But the empirical way of knowing may, at the most, give us knowledge of the things of the world through the instrumentality of the sense organs and mind. As such, according to the Jainas, it is not a direct experience. It does not give us knowledge of reality. The Jainas believe that the soul is pure and perfect, and omniscient. But through the obscuration of the soul by the karma, the knowledge that the soul has is obscured and vitiated. Once the veil of karma is removed, the soul knows directly. That is pratyakşa. The knowledge acquired through the sense organs and the manas is knowledge obtained indirectly by means of external sources. The Jainas, therefore, said that such experience is parokşa, or what they later called sarvyavahāra pratyaksa. We have, however, the possibility of getting direct and immediate experience without the instrumentality of the sense organs and the manas. The soul directly cognizes as it is freed from the veil of karma. This is pratyaksa. It may be called supernormal perception. Modern psychical research recognizes some such phenomenon and calls it extra-sensory perception.
The problem of supernormal experience is not new. Indian philosophers were aware of supernormal perception. Many of them made a distinction between laukika pratyaksa, empirical perception, and alaukika pratyakşa, supernormal perception. All schools of Indian philosophy except the Cārvākas and the Mimāṁsakas believe in supernormal perception. The Cārvākas do not accept any other source of knowledge than sense perception. The Mīmārsakas also deny the possibility of supernormal perception, because, according to them, the past, the future, the distant and the subtle can be known only by the injunctions of the Vedas. Supernormal perception is not governed by the general laws of perception. It transcends the categories of time, space and causality. The facts of empirical experience cannot explain the nature of supernormal perception. However, the Indian treatment of supernormal perception is more descriptive than explanatory. It is not based on experimental analysis. The Indian philosophers arrived at the conception
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