Citta or mind has two degrees: (1) the form of states such as real cognition, including perception, inference, competent evidence, unreal cognition, imagination, sleep and memory. (2) In the form in which all those states are suppressed. Between the stage of complete outgoing activity of ordinary experience (_vyutthāna_) and complete suppression of all states, there are thousands of states of infinite variety, through which a man’s experiences have to pass, from the vyutthāna state to the nirodha. In addition to the five states spoken of above, there is another kind of real knowledge and intuition, called prajñā, which dawns when by concentration the citta is fixed upon any one state and that alone. This prajñā is superior to all other means of knowledge, whether perception, inference or competent evidence of the Vedas, in this, that it is altogether unerring, unrestricted and unlimited in its scope. Pramāṇa, we have seen, includes perception, inference and competent evidence. Perception originates when the mind or citta, through the senses (ear, skin, eye, taste and nose) is modified by external objects and passes to them, generating a kind of knowledge about them in which their specific characters become more predominant. Mind is all-pervasive and can come in touch with the external world, by which we have the perception of the thing. Like light, which emits rays and pervades all, though it remains in one place, the citta by its vṛttis comes in contact with the external world, is changed into the form of the object of perception and thus becomes the cause of perception; as the citta has to pass through the senses, it becomes coloured by them, which explains the fact that perception is impossible without the help of the senses. As it has to pass through the senses, it undergoes the limitations of the senses, which it can avoid, if it can directly concentrate itself upon any object without the help of the senses; from this originates the prajñā, through which dawns absolute real knowledge of the thing; unhampered by the limitations of the senses which can act only within a certain area or distance and cannot cognize subtler objects. We see that in ordinary perception our minds are drawn towards the object, as iron is attracted by magnets. Thus Bhikshu says in explaining _Vyāsa-bhāshya_ IV. 17:— “The objects of knowledge, though inactive in themselves, may yet draw the everchanging cittas towards them like a magnet and change them in accordance with their own forms, just as a piece of cloth is turned red by coming into contact with red lac.” So it is that the cittas attain the form of anything with which they come in touch and there is then the perception that that thing is known. Perception (_pratyaksha_) is distinguished from inference, etc., in this, that here the knowledge arrived at is predominantly of the specific and special characters (_viśesha_) of the thing and not of its generic qualities us in inference, etc.