Why Yogic Perception Matters
Jed Forman
More than ever, scholars must show why their work matters. Indulging mere curiosities no longer cuts it. We must continually ask, and are continually asked, how our work contributes to facing ever-surmounting global challenges. It is right that scholars shoulder this responsibility.
What, then, could a book on such a seemingly arcane topic as “yogic perception” have to offer? This term is found throughout ancient Indian and medieval Tibetan religious literature. It concerns the perceptual prowess of yogic practitioners or meditators. These perceptual capacities are myriad, from a type of visionary superpower able to see over far distances, to clairvoyance, to insight into the metaphysical nature of reality. To be sure, these abilities hold their own intrigue. But is scholarship on yogic perception an indulgence worthy of distraction from more pressing issues?
I contend that many of our modern crises are rooted in a failure of mutual intelligibility. Differences inevitably remain irreconcilable when both parties are convinced that only their assumptions represent reality. As Jean-François Lyotard argues, this creates a situation of incommensurability, where no common ground is possible. One solution, therefore, is to disrupt the fundamentality of our assumptions, to recognize them as assumptions.
But is scholarship on yogic perception an indulgence worthy of distraction from more pressing issues?
Out of Sight, Into Mind takes this as one of its primary goals. The exploration of yogic perception reveals foundational assumptions about consciousness and the world that are likely counterintuitive to most readers. In turn, the reader comes to recognize some of their own assumptions as just that, lenses on the world more than coming from the world. In the words of the German writer and philosopher Novalis, the goal, then, is to render the strange familiar and the familiar strange.
I offer two instances from the book as examples. The first concerns Buddhist ideas of omniscience. Buddhists largely argue that yogic perception affords the means of omniscience, the ability to know everything, but does so in a counterintuitive way. The argument goes like this: Our lack of omniscience is adventitious, created by the illusion of the subject being separate from the objects it is aware of. It is only through this conceit that one thinks there exist objects apart from awareness. Once one realizes no such objects exist, that subject and object are not separate, then one realizes all “objects” are part of awareness, eventuating omniscience.
The counterintuitive assumption here is the fundamental coextensivity between mind and world.
The counterintuitive assumption here is the fundamental coextensivity between mind and world. This contrasts with a deeply ingrained assumption within the anglophone tradition, mainly stemming from phenomenology, that the mind and world are fundamentally juxtaposed, separate from each other but in relation. In the book, I demonstrate that arguments about omniscient yogis, coupled with some cognitive science, give us good reason to question the fundamentality of this separation. I further explore social ramifications. While the division between mind and world precipitates a certain individualism, inherited from the Enlightenment, Buddhist conceptions lean toward collectivist possibilities—another means of fostering greater equity in society.
Another example concerns our assumptions about perception. In this case, the analysis reveals some surprising assumptions that are shared across cultures. Many ancient Hindu theorists understood yogic perception extramissively. That is, they believed yogic perception functions by shooting rays out from the eyes to perceive objects. Being able to see over long distances, for example, is a product of having especially powerful projective rays.
As it turns out, the intuitive tendency to think of perception extramissively is pervasive across humans. Contemporary studies show that people still harbor these intuitions, which affect their reasoning about optics, even when they explicitly claim not to hold extramissive beliefs. Buddhists also explicitly claim to reject extramissive theories of visual perception. And yet, as shown in the book, some of their reasoning about yogic perception reflects subtle extramissive intuitions.
By investigating our pan-human tolerance for incongruity, readers naturally become more reflexive, curious about where we all might be falling short of our professed principles.
This reveals that none of us are perfectly consistent thinking machines. Even the most elite scholars maintain particular beliefs, often not consciously held, that fail to accord with their general outlook. How else, besides bald duplicity, can we explain the blatant incongruity between the US founding fathers’ claim that “all men are created equal” and the abhorrent declaration that enslaved individuals each counted for only 3/5 of a person? By investigating our pan-human tolerance for incongruity, readers naturally become more reflexive, curious about where we all might be falling short of our professed principles.
These are just two instances among many where Out of Sight, Into Mind invites the reader into unfamiliar assumptions, provoking them to evaluate their own more closely. Inspiring curiosity about the worldview of others and a willingness to probe and dissect one’s own outlook—even, perhaps, revealing it to oneself for the first time—Out of Sight, Into Mind promotes a spirit of greater mutual understanding. Of course, understanding another view should not be confused with concession. Indeed, some views are harmful. And some views are professed in bad faith, often with the ulterior motive to exacerbate prejudice and oppression.
I thus have no glib notion that somehow, if we all could just understand each other better, all conflicts would dissolve. Much of the evil in the world comes from bad actors who must be resisted more so than simply understood. Still, I have confidence that the bad actors remain a minority, and their ability to manipulate others is predicated on divisions created by lack of understanding. Out of Sight, Into Mind is one effort to resolve those misunderstandings by stoking our curiosity and reflexivity.
Jed Forman is the Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Assistant Professor in Buddhist Studies at Simpson College and the author of Out of Sight, Into Mind: The History and Philosophy of Yogic Perception.
