Tattvasangraha 01

Author(s): Embar Krishnamacharya
Publisher: Central Library

Page 29

FOREWORD
XIVI
That the foetus is endowed with consciousness is a theory too bold to be asserted, because how can the sense-organs receive sensations when they are not in existence. ?
(1865) Without sensations no consciousness is possible; in an unconscious state also, there is no consciousness because the senseorgans do not receive sensations.
(1866) In the unconscious state the consciousness does not exist even as a dormant power, because no power is possible without a recipient.
(1867) You do not accept an Ego as a recipient of consciousness, so when the body perishes where can the consciousness remain ? It must perish also.
(1868) You hold that the mind passes on to another body after death. If it is so, then how without seeing that body can we believe that the mind passes on to another body?
(1869) Even if we accept that the mind at death passes on to another body, how can we understand that this particular mind passes on to another body? The consciousness remaining in different bodies of elephants and horses cannot pass into each other's bodies. How can there be one continuous stream of consciousness? (1870)
Therefore you have either to assume the Vaidika theory of Åtman which is eternal and endowed with consciousness, or be an Atheist like us.
(1871) Refutation. S'ântarakṣita then proceeds to refute the theories of the Lokayatas.
What are you disproving with regard to the next life? Do you want to refute the chain of moments in consciousness that are connected to one another by the law of causation, or do you assume something different from the stream of consciousness as the next world?
(1872) We hold that the next birth is nothing but a particular condition of the stream of consciousness which is eternal; so this, the previous, and the future births are nothing but particular conditions of this chain of consciousness.
(1873)