Jiva Gosvamin on Perception and Freedom: Objective Perspectivalism and Choice

This paper examines Jīva Gosvāmin’s views on the nature of cognitive and linguistic perception, which says that when the senses contact objects, the intellect uses language to produce a knowledge episode, or what he calls savikalpa knowledge. Jīva argues that there are three capacities that also influence how reality is known, and that this rule applies even to knowledge of the one highest non-dual awareness. In this sense, perspective determines perception, but Jīva is an objective perspectivalist: there is a single and objective reality or being, and there are many beings that are circumscribed, each with its own perspective on reality, and they can be classified into three groups. I will argue that Jīva’s objective perspectivalism says we must decide one way or another how to see the world with words by selecting a yoga.