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Appendix to Volume I
persons, the states of the one series cannot affect those in the other. One conscious state is thus admitted to be determining another conscious state, and that another, and so on, within the series. Thus it has to be admitted that consciousness exists, even in the unconscious state; for had it not been so, then there would be a lapse of consciousness at that time and this would mean the breaking up of the series. States of consciousness are independent of the sense-organs and the sense-objects, as they are determined by the previous states; in dreams, when the sense-organs are not operating and when there is no sense-object contact, the conscious states continue to be produced; and in the case of the knowledge of past or future events, or the knowledge of chimerical things like the hare's horn, the independence of conscious states is clearly demonstrated. Thus it is proved that consciousness is neither produced by the body nor is in any way determined or conditioned by it, and it is determined only by its past states and itself determines the future states. Thus also the existence of the past and the future lives is proved.
The arguments of the Jains and of the Naiyāyikas against the Cārvākas are somewhat of a different nature from those of the idealistic Buddhists just described, as the former admitted permanent souls which the latter denied. Thus Vidyānandi, in his Tattvārtha-śloka-vārtika, says that the chief reason why the soul cannot be regarded as a product of matter is the fact of undisputed, unintermittent and universal self-consciousness unlimited by time or space. Such perceptions as “this is blue” or “I am white" depend upon external objects or the sense-organs, and cannot therefore be regarded as typical cases of self-consciousness. But such perceptions as “I am happy” which directly refer to the selfperception of the ego do not depend on the operation of any external instruments such as the sense-organs or the like. If this selfconsciousness were not admitted to be established by itself, no other doctrine, not even the Cārvāka doctrine which seeks to demolish all attested convictions, could be asserted, for all assertions are made by virtue of this self-consciousness. If any consciousness required another consciousness to have itself attested, then that would involve a vicious infinite and the first consciousness would have to be admitted as unconscious. Thus, since the self manifests itself in self-consciousness (sva-samvedana), and since the body is perceived
