Perception vs. Abstinence

Dr. Parimal Devnath

12B174, Valvan, Lonavla,

Pune, 410403. Maharashtra,

Phone: 9421058695.

 

A human being connects to the world through five senses.  Five senses are: eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin.  Sixth is mind (manah sasthani-indriyani---, Gita).  Indian schools of philosophy considers mind to be a sense organ just like eyes etc., whereas western philosophy does not think mind is a sense organ.  All five senses essentially need mind’s involvement to get connected to their respective objects.  Without mind, senses cannot function at all.  Just having involvement of mind requires awareness or alertness and it has various levels or degrees of intensity to have the senses doing well.  Yet awareness/alertness is not a sense organ. Finally, consciousness which is all-pervasive and is personal as well as impersonal or universal needs to flow through the ‘personal’ channel of senses to enable sense perception.  There can be a few more intermediate processes taking place in this process of perception.

So we get the process of sense perception like this:  Consciousness, mind, sense organ, objects.  This can be called as sense perception.

(In almost all Indian philosophical and esoteric scriptures, perception is dealt in some length with some considerable or minor difference.  A very lengthy discussion on this crucial topic is found in Nyaya.  This may prove it significance).

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