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SOME PROBLEMS IN JAINA PSYCHOLOGY
of supernormal perception through speculation and the higher intuition. Very often, the whole theory of the gradation of supernormal perception is built on the basis of the transcendental experience of the seers. The Nyāya Vaisesika, the Sāmkhya Yoga, the Vedānta, the Buddhist and the Jaina schools of thought believe in supernormal perception, although they have given different descriptions of the experience. According to the Nyāya Vaiseșika schools, perception is distinguished into laukika and alaukika. On the basis of the philosophy of the prakrti and the purusa, the Sāṁkhya philosophers maintain that supernormal perception can cognize past and future objects, which are really existent as respectively sub-latent and potential. Patañjali thinks that ordinary mental functions can be arrested by constant practice of meditation and concentration. Samādhi is the consummation of the long and arduous process of inhibition of the bodily functions, concentration and meditation. The Vedāntists accept Patañjali's view regarding supernormal perception.
In the West, modern scientists have begun to take more interest in such perception, although they call it paranormal, and not supernormal perception. It is also often called extra-sensory perception. The Society for Psychical Research has carried out investigations on this problem. It is now recognized that cognitions independent of the senses are possible. Such phenomena as clairvoyance, telepathy and the like have been recorded to prove the possibility of the occurrence of extra-sensory perception. But such psychical research is entirely modern. It was founded in 1882. Myers and Henry Sidgwick were the nucleus of research in this field. William Barret, the physicist, was also a member of the Society. Many eminent philosophers and psychologists took keen interest in the investigation of extra-sensory perception. Prof. Bergson, C. D. Broad, L. P. Jacks, H. H. Price and R. H. Thouless are among the supporters of this type of investigation. However, interest in the study of extra-sensory perception may be said to be very old. The first recorded psychical research in the West was carried out under instructions from King Croesus in the sixth century B.C. Wanting to test the powers of the Oracles, he sent embassies with instructions to ask what the King was doing at that time. But it was only in the 19th century that systematic study of this problem was started with the establishment of the Society for Psychical Research. The aim of the Society is to approach these various problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind and in the spirit of exact and unimpassioned enquiry.
Going back to the Indian philosophers of the past, we find that there has been a general recognition of the fact that normal perception through sense organs and mind is not all. In the Nyāya Philosophy,
1 Tyrrell (G. N. M.): The Personality of Man, p. 46, (Pelican). 2 Flew (A): A New Approach to Psychical Research, Ch. II, p. 6.
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