 According to Advaita Vedānta the defining characteristic of perception is the directness of knowledge acquired through perception (Bilimoria, 1980:35). In highlighting the directness of the perceptual process, the Advaitin differs from Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā proponents for whom the contact of the sense faculty with its object is central to the perceptual process. Vedānta Paribhāṣā (ed. 1972: 30) cites pleasure and pain as instances of perception that are directly intuited without any sense object contact. For the Advaitin perception is simply the immediacy of consciousness; knowledge not mediated by any instrument (Gupta et. al., 1991, p. 40). It is worth noting that this definition is very close to that accepted by Navya-Naiyāyikas. Like the latter, the Advaitins regard the role of the sensory connection as accidental, rather than essential, to the perceptual process. The Neo-Advaitins accept the distinction between conceptual or determinate perception (they refer to it as viṣayagata pratyakṣa) and non-conceptual or indeterminate perception (nirvikaplapka pratyakṣa), but do not think of non-conceptual perception as simply a prior stage of conceptualized perception, as other Hindu schools do.   