The Process of Visual perception

 The process of visual perception, according to Advaita Vedanta , is described in chapter 1 of Vedaanta Paribhaashaa thus. Just as the water in a tank, issuing through a hole, enters, through a channel, a number of fields and assumes the shapes of those fields, so also the luminous mind, stretching out through the eye, goes to the space occupied by objects and becomes modified into the forms of those objects. Such a modification is called a vr.tti of the mind. The same fact is also stated in Panchadas’i, 4.27, 28 and 29, based on S’rii S’ankara’s Upades’asaahasrii, Metrical portion, chapter 14, verses 3 & 4. The whole process of visual perception consists of the following steps:--

(1)    The mind stretches out through the eye, reaches the object and takes the form of the object. This is called a vr.tti or mode of the mind.

(2)    The mental mode removes the veil of ignorance that hides the object.

(3)    Consciousness underlying the object, being manifest through the mental mode, illumines the object. 

(4)    The mental mode associates the object-consciousness with the subject-consciousness.

(5)    The subject perceives the object. 

Consciousness manifest through the mental mode coincident with the object serves as the knowledge of the object. This is known as phala (fruit), being the resultant knowledge.

The mind has three main divisions in this process, namely,

(1)   the part within the body,

(2)   the part that extends from the body to the object perceived,

(3)   the part that coincides with the object.

 The first part above is known as pramaataa and the consciousness manifest in it is called pramaata-chaitanya. This is the perceiver. The consciousness manifest in the second part is called pramaaNa-chaitanya, or the means of knowledge. The consciousness manifest in the third part is pramiti-chaitanya or percept.

The object perceived is called prameya. Since the third part of the mind mentioned above coincides with the object, prameya-chaitanya, or the consciousness underlying the object and pramiti-chaitanya become identical. The point to be kept in mind here is that all objects in this world are superimposed on Consciousness, i.e. Brahman. All objects are covered by a veil of ignorance, which has to be removed for seeing the object. It is only consciousness that reveals the objects, since the objects themselves are non-luminous.   

 
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