Perception In Indian Philosophy

The early Upanishads explained it in terms of the self as
an Inner Light which shines outward and illuminates the objective world.

The realism of the Nyaya school on the other hand explained it in terms of immediate sensory apprehensions. They are not bound up with language.

Error in perception then occurs as a defect in the sense-organ because only partial apprehension of the object has occurred because one mistakenly identifies an object based upon associations remembered from previous experiences.

Clearly, the Nyaya school is based upon empirical evidence and continued experimentation.


The Buddhist conception speaks of sense-perception which does not involve conceptualisation and is immediate and non-conceptual. What we apprehend with our sense in its unmediated giveness is the particular instant that characterises what is really there.

The picture of reality, that we construct as unenlightened beings is the product of our "pure sensations"/ "pure experience" with linguistic forms and results in a mis apprehension.

Each person's apprehension of reality is also conditioned by our karmic baggage.

So the Buddhist conception of perception and experience is unlike the Kantian one (in which the a priori categories are unbreachable conditions of human experience) whereby one can transcend the cognitive limitations and attain the immediacy f a direct-cognition of Brahman.

The Yogacara school of Buddhist thought went on to posit hat all knowledge-events are fundamentally mental in nature. One does not require the postulation of external objects as the cause of our perceptions to make sense of the world- all that one experiences in perception are the images or mental-representations of objects. In this sense, it contrasts very strongly with the direct realism of Brahmanical school and some argue even repudiates the existence of an external world.

More likely the Yogacara school with its emphasis upon the transformation of consciousness does not thereby involve the postulation of external objects in order to explain our experiences.