Prama¯

Abstract

There is substantial literature on cognition, and indeed, it is conventional to assume that consciousness and cognitive processes are co-determinate. The question that Indian psychology asked millennia ago is more radical – Do we see the reality as it is? Without getting into disciplinary siloes of metaphysics and philosophy, this question is central to cognitive psychology. Human cognition can be valid or invalid; Indian psychology proposes pathways to achieve valid cognition; assuming that conventional cognition frequently mis-perceives the reality – internal and external. Pramā is the concept used for valid cognition in IKS, and the chapter discusses both mainstream psychology and Indian psychological concepts to build a case for Pramā or valid cognition. Attention is a central set of processes utilized by IKS to arrive at Pramā. The chapter further discusses other cognitive processes such as concepts, schema and symbolization and intentional re-symbolization in human cognition through language and sensory codes. The chapter restates the Indian psychology that recognizes the emptiness of the conventional cognition and a conventionally constituted self to then engender the lived practice of mantra, mudrā and yaṇtra as the psychological tools used by IP to re-symbolize the internal and external worlds in states of sustained attention. Thus, the Indian psychology of valid cognition opens up the possibility of freedom from the suffering of self-constructed concepts and schemas of the world. Finally, Indian psychology then leads to the intriguing idea of a ‘no mind’. Clearly, the Indian psychology pathways step the grounded embodied consciousness, a transformed affect and a valid cognition to lead to a no mind! On a surface and much commodified level, contemporary discourse does allude to a mindful living, but we have not yet given a thought to the possibility of a no-mind.