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xx] Ontological categories according to Verkațanātha 287 when we say “my body," "my head,” etc. He says that though we have various parts of one body and though some of these may be destroyed, yet in spite of such variations they are all supposed to belong to one unchangeable unity, the self, which seems to persist through all changes of time. If the experiences belonged to the different parts of the body, then on the removal of any of the limbs the experiences which are associated with that limb could not be remembered; for it cannot be admitted that there is a transmission of experiences from one limb to another. Even a mother's experience cannot be shared by the fætus. It cannot also be supposed that the experiences of the different limbs are somehow collected as impressions in the heart or brain; for it can neither be directly perceived, nor is there a datum which can lead to such an inference. Moreover, if there is a continual accumulation of impressions in the heart or brain, such a matter of conglomeration would be different at each moment through dissipation and aggregation of its constituent impressions, and as such it would be impossible to explain the fact of memory through such a changing entity?
The unified behaviour of an individual cannot also be regarded as being due to the co-operation of a number of individual units of consciousness; for, in that case there must be individual purposes in each of them, leading to a conflict, and if they have no such purposes, there is no reason why they should co-operate together. If it is assumed that these individual constituent conscious-entities are naturally such that they are engaged in serving one another without any conflict, then the more normal possibility would be that, having no natural attachment or antipathy, they would cease to act, and this would result in a cessation of all activities on the part of the constituted individual as a whole. Again whenever an animal is born it is perceived as endowed with certain instinctive tendencies towards certain action, such as sucking the mother's breast, which demonstrates its attachment in that direction and necessarily presupposes an experience of that kind in a previous birth. This shows that there is a self which is different and distinct from the body and its parts. The experiences and their root-impressions
sarva-bodhaiś ca hrt-kośe samskārā-dhānam ityapi na drstam na ca tat-klptau lingam kim api dyśyate na ca samskāra-kośas te sanghātā-tmā prati-kşanam pracayā-pacayābhyām syād bhinnah smartā'tra ko bhavet.
Sarvārtha-siddhi, p. 153.
