In every mental cognition there is a twofold activity that takes place simultaneously.
In India, in the schools of Vedanta, for example, this subject has been thrashed out
threadbare, and such Vedantic works as the Panchadasi, for instance, have devoted
an entire chapter to the discussion of this subject. It has been concluded by these
teachers of philosophy that every object is transcendentally ideal and empirically
real. It has a real character as well as an ideal character. Empirically it is real, but
transcendentally it is ideal. The point is that every object is contained both in the
cosmic set-up of things as well as in the empirical realm. Or we may say, the heads of
people are in heaven and their feet are planted on the earth, so that we belong to both
realms—heaven as well as earth. The perception of an object, both in its
psychological character as well as its philosophical nature, is difficult to explain, and
this is the entire problem of philosophy.
There is no philosophy except this point: how do we know things at all? The
knowledge of a thing or an object is the recognition of the presence of something, as
conditioned by the process to which the perceiving mind is subject. There is the
necessity for the existence of something, and without that existence the mind would
not be cognising anything, because it cannot perceive an airy nothing. The existence
of something prior to the operation of the mental activity in perception should be
there, and yet the mind cannot cognise that something as it is in itself. The mind
cannot cognise an object as it is in itself because the mind is conditioned by space,
time and causal connections. It can know an object only as it is determined by this
threefold network of space, time and cause. An object cannot be known in any other
manner. This is conditioned perception. The object is modified in perception by the
structure into which the object has been cast, so that when we are presented with an
object of perception, it is already cast in the mould of space, time and cause. It is the
shape that it has taken in space, time and cause relation that is presented before the
mind. We do not see the object as it is in itself. Not only that—even the mind is cast
in this mould. The mind cannot think anything which is not in space, which is not in
time, and which is not causally connected. There is a restriction imposed on the mind
by these conditions of perception. Space, time and cause: these are the conditions.
They operate objectively as well as subjectively. They are universally present, so their
world is phenomenal. We call this world phenomenal because it is conditioned.
Conditioned by whom? By this thing called space, time and cause. Minus these
things, objects cannot be known. And yet, there is something which presents itself as
an object.
What is that ‘something’? That something which is cast in the mould of space, time
and cause is the real object. Some philosophers call it the thing-in-itself—the thing as
it is in itself, which is impossible of cognition by the minds of individuals merely
because they are cast in the mould of space, time and cause. While there is a
necessity to logically admit the existence of something which is non-conditioned by
space, time and cause, because of the fact that even conditioning would not be
possible unless the objects exist in some status of their own, yet it is true that they
cannot be known. Thus, the object as it is in itself would be a kind of inference rather
than a perception. What is perceived is a process which has been introduced into this
relationship between the mind and the object by the fact of space, time and cause.
What is the outcome of this analysis? The outcome is that the objects have a status of
their own. As I mentioned, in our Indian technical Vedanta phraseology this
existence of the object in its own status is referred to as what is called Ishvara