I begin with the question that concludes the third essay: “How can it be possible for faith and science to possess opposed conceptions when both actually start out from one and the same given thing, the world?”

All that exists presents itself on one hand as “something that is,” and on the other as “something that happens”—that is to say, as something found in a state of perpetual change, as processes.

Where something happens, there adequate causes must be present. These adequate causes must be forces.

All processes—i.e. the entire play of world-events—fall into two great classes: those that are maintained, dead processes, and those that maintain themselves, living processes; the latter presenting themselves, on the one hand, as processes of combustion, as flame, and on the other as processes of alimentation, as living beings.

All dead processes can be interpreted or read as falls. Their type is the falling stone. A stone does not fall because of an indwelling force that causes its falling; it only falls because it has previously been raised, because between it and the surface of the earth there exists a difference of tension. Its fall thus signifies that force must have been present, in the sense that it must previously have been active; for otherwise the difference in position of stone and surface of the earth could never have come about. When physics interprets the fall of the stone in differing fashion—namely, by having it caused by the attractive force of the earth’s surface in action during the fall—this is purely a working hypothesis, advanced solely in the interest of a uniform physical world-theory.

To much the same effect as the falling stone, every physical happening without exception is to be interpreted or read, whether it concern mechanical, chemical, thermal, electrical, magnetic, or any other such-like phenomena. All alike are to be taken as falls from places of higher to places of lower tension. The import of each and all is only that forces, actuating impulsions, must once have been present. In each case we really have to do not with actions but with reactions.

The proof that no actual forces are here at work is to be found in the fact that the process ceases so soon as the differences of tension are adjusted.

This world of reactions is the given province of all science.

Science, because bent upon furnishing demonstration, has a title to existence only where there is nothing that is not perceptible to sense. Where there are actual living processes, there actual forces must be present. A force, however, can never be perceptible to sense; for everything perceptible to sense necessitates the question as to its adequate cause—that is, as to the force in virtue of which it exists. Where there are dead, re-actual processes, there forces are not in action themselves, and hence force is not a real but only a conceptual necessity, a mere logical presumption. Hence also in the interpretation of this re-actual world, it is always possible to slur over, to eliminate the question as to actual forces, and to replace these latter by the various differences of tension, of potentiality, and thus remain wholly within the domain of the sensible.

Such a position is quite permissible to a science that devotes itself exclusively to technique, i.e. aims at nothing more than to measure and calculate in advance, for it is only re-actual proceedings that admit of being measured and calculated in advance. When such and such a planet will occupy such and such a position in the heavens, this admits of being calculated beforehand with the most perfect accuracy. But whether this next moment I shall twirl my thumb to the right or to the left, that no science, no academy in the world can compute in advance.

The position which science takes up towards the world—a rejection in principle of all that is not perceptible to sense—of necessity involves restriction to the re-actual world, and therewith the mechanical conception of the play of world-events.

Yet once more. This conception is perfectly legitimate so long as it confines itself to the re-actual world. But it becomes an anomaly the moment it seeks to pass beyond this re-actual world—the moment a man tries to read the actual world, the living processes, according to the same scheme—that of a falling. For here it is actual forces that are at work; here the question as to actual forces declines to be eliminated or exempted by acts of intellectual violence that by their repugnancy to common sense bring about their own downfall. Later on we shall have to revert to these attempts to interpret physically living beings, the entire man as a falling, a mere process of adjustment, and to explain consciousness in purely mechanical fashion. Though one should be able to “read” the animal organism after physical formulas in never so far-reaching a manner, though one should be able to co-ordinate the whole process of alimentation, the housekeeping of life, in never so perfect a fashion with the law of the conservation of energy, nothing has been gained withal that might settle the question as to what exactly that is which keeps this mechanism going: such a question is never once touched on at all; nay, by this method of procedure it is deliberately pushed on one side, as much and as long as ever is possible, until straightforward, natural thinking rises in revolt against such behaviour as a learned pastime and demands actuality.

Hence:—

That particular form of mental life which rejects in principle what is not perceptible to sense, thereby of necessity is confined to the re-actual world. If it seeks to encroach upon actual processes, it must arbitrarily leave out of consideration that in them which is essential, the forces at work in them,—whereby it falls into absurdities that speedily take their revenge by raising problems that are insoluble.

This form of mental life is universally called “science,” whereby, it must be admitted, the more or less active counter-currents—those of the teleological conception of things—are passed over unnoticed. Science, properly speaking, is always materialistic, and its conception of the play of world-events always strictly mechanical. For it the adequate cause of each occurrence is simply another occurrence. Adequate causes remain perceptible to sense.

Opposite to it stands faith.

Faith is that particular form of mental life which recognizes an “imperceptible to sense in itself,” i.e. believes, and so doing, assumes a universal “adequate cause in itself” for the entire play of world-events. From this it follows that the living processes are the true province of all faith. In them alone are actual forces, i.e. that which is imperceptible to sense, actively at work.

As soon as faith seeks to make use of its intuition, i.e. seeks to supply a world-view, it finds itself in the same predicament as science. Just as this latter, as world-theory, is obliged to read the actual processes according to the scheme of the re-actual, so faith as world-theory is obliged to read the re-actual processes according to the scheme of the actual; in other words, it must represent the world, even to the extent that it represents itself as purely a falling, as guided by a divine force. Here not a hair can drop from my head, not a stone fall to the ground, without a divine decree having taken an active part therein as adequate cause, an idea which, thought out, leads to the absurdity of the doctrine of predestination, with which doctrine faith robs herself of the possibility of her own existence. For, where there is predestination, there is no free will; where there is no free will there is no soul; and where there is no soul there is no God.

That which, in being thought out, deprives itself of the possibility of existence is contrary to sense, and as such, a nescience, like illusion and error.

Between and raised above both these opposed positions stands the Buddha.

This is his teaching:—

All that is, all processes whatsoever, whether they be re-actual or whether they be actual, all is Sankhāra. This is the epistemological key-word of Buddhism. Its meaning is, All is of a compounded, of a conditioned nature. The Buddha concurs with modern science in so far as it rejects an uncompounded, an unconditioned, a unity in itself, a soul-substance, or whatever else one chooses to style it. As already shown, for science one event is entirely conditioned by other events; she makes the adequate cause of one phenomenon of life simply other phenomena of life, and thereby frankly remains always in the realm of the sensible, the demonstrable—thereby limits herself, however, to the re-actual side of the world. Among the actual, self-sustaining processes, this position has no foothold whatever; for in these actual forces must be present, and as such never by any means can be perceptible to sense, thus also can never be the subject of science.

One can only speak of an actual view of the world where the actual world is concerned. I comprehend it when I discern the adequate causes of the actual processes, that is, the forces actively at work in them.

Now the word Sankhāra signifies not only “the compounded,” “the conditioned,” but also “the compounding,” “the conditioning,” somewhat the same as the German word Wirkung may equally well be held to signify the result effected by the cause as the actual effecting of that result itself. In the former case it signifies that forces have been present; it has reference to the re-actual world. In the latter case it means that forces are present; it refers to the actual world. Like the word Wirkung, the word Sankhāra embraces both these aspects.

With reference to the self-sustaining, actual processes, the teaching of the Buddha proceeds:—

All living beings exist by reason of forces. Accordingly the Buddha here agrees with faith, inasmuch as he recognizes the presence in living beings of what is imperceptible to sense; for a force can never be perceptible to sense.

But whilst faith makes every living being exist in virtue of a universal force, and thereby assumes an “adequate cause in itself”—as a transcendent, an absolute, a god—which means “believing,” thus landing itself in the predicament of having to interpret the re-actual side of the world also by this “force”; the Buddha on his part teaches:—

Every living being is here in virtue of individual force peculiar to him alone. This force hereby in quite a literal sense becomes an in-force, an en-ergy. The Buddha teaches the existence of actual energies, in contradistinction to faith’s universal force.

This in-force peculiar to every living being, and thereby unique, is called by the Buddha the Kamma (Sanskrit, Karma) of such a living being.

Kamma means nothing but “the working.” Kamma is that in virtue of which a living being manifests activity after its own unique fashion—in its own unique way reacts upon the external world; it is that which makes a living being to be an individuality, a personality.

Every living being is a thing unique, and as such incapable of being compared, incapable of being repeated, as re-actual processes are not, since in them no actual forces are active. Though I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think the same thing, it is yet my own, a something unique that I see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think.

I am a thing unique, a personality in virtue of my in-force, of my Kamma.

The distinction between an in-force and a universal force is this:—

The latter is a something existing of itself, a something existing of its own authority, i.e. a creation of faith; whilst an in-force has being solely in dependence upon its material, only with the help of the material worked up by it. As “heat,” “light,” “electricity,” and so forth, are words of no meaning in the absence of a material in which to manifest themselves, so in-force Kamma, is a word of no meaning in the absence of its material.

This material of Kamma is by the Buddha called the Khandhas.

They are five in number, these namely:—

Corporeality, Sensation, Perception, Discriminations, and Consciousness.

The word Khandha may be variously translated as group, aggregation, coagulation, formation.

The Khandhas do not represent parts, pieces of the I-process, but phases, forms of development, something like the shape, colour and odour in a flower. An actual process, a proceeding of the nature of combustion or alimentation, never can have any parts. It is only in connection with dead products like a table, a chair, and so forth, that one can speak of such; as also where one intentionally conceives of things after this fashion with a definite end in view. From the purely anatomical standpoint, the eye, the brain, the lungs, the liver, and so forth in a corpse, are parts of the body. Truly speaking, in the living person they are forms of development, since all have come forth from one common root. One must keep firm hold of this if one makes claim to think in terms of actuality.

“Material,” in contradistinction to matter, is that which is specially worked up by an energy. “Matter in itself” is all as hollow a figment of thought, projecting like a blind end out of actuality, as is “force in itself.” Both are products of faith: the one pertaining to science, the other to religions. Actuality has no “substance,” no “matter,” but only material, i.e. matter worked up by energies; it has no “force,” but only energies, i.e. forces apparelled, substantialized, so to speak. Actuality always and everywhere is only the unity of opposites—a process.

To allow one’s thought to occupy itself with a “force by itself,” or a “substance by itself,” means to work with half actualities possessing as much content of actuality as one side of a sheet of paper imagined by itself. I assert that to think thus is an intellectual breach of discipline.

Now the manner in which I represent myself corporeally, receive sensations, acquire perceptions, exercise discriminations, become conscious of things, is one peculiar to me and to me alone, a thing unique. This means:—

In every motion, corporeal as mental, physical as psychical, I am the form of Kamma itself.

This fact, that every living being is wholly and entirely the embodiment of his Kamma, is expressed by the Buddha in the word “anattā,” not-self. All beings are “anattā,” but this does not in any way mean, as science would fain make out, that they are all of a purely re-actual nature. It only means that they do not conceal within them a “force in itself,” a “constant in itself,” but are out and out processes of combustion, of alimentation, such as cannot conceal any “constant in itself,” since at every moment of their existence they represent a fresh biological value, and hence hold nothing that could possibly justify the notion of an I-identity, a genuine self.

“The body, O monks, is ‘anattā.’ If the body were the self (attā), then this corporeal frame could not go to decay, and in this corporeal frame, this wish of mine would find fulfilment: ‘Let my corporeal part be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’ But, O monks, because the corporeal is anattā, therefore does the corporeal go to decay, and the wish, ‘Let my corporeal part be thus! Let not my corporeal part be so!’ does not find fulfilment.”⁠[1]

Following the like scheme, the remaining four Khandhas are then dealt with; and so, step by step, the idea of an I-identity is banished.

The Buddha conceives of the entire actual world, i.e. the world of self-sustaining processes as an infinitely large number of combustion processes. Every being burns in virtue of a purely individual in-force, Kamma.

This his world-conception is given by the Buddha in that famous “Fire Sermon” which, shortly after the inauguration of his career of activity as a teacher, he delivered to his followers on a hill in the neighbourhood of Gayā. It is the “Sermon on the Mount” of Buddhism.

“All things, O monks, is a burning. And why, O monks, is all a burning? The eye, O monks, is a burning. Visual consciousness [that is, the conscious representation that results in virtue of visual impressions] is a burning. Visual contact [i.e. the act of the encountering of eye and objects] is a burning. That which arises in virtue of visual contact, be it a pleasant, be it an unpleasant sensation, be it a neither pleasant nor unpleasant sensation, is a burning.”⁠[2]

Following the like scheme, the ear and the audible, the nose and the olfactory, the tongue and the gustatory, the body and the tangible, thought and concepts are then dealt with.

The place of the Buddha between and above the opposites, faith and science, may be briefly formulated as follows:—

Faith says, “Everything stands,”—namely, in the place in which it has been set by that “force in itself,” God. Science says, “Everything falls,” which means that she neglects actual forces in general. The Buddha says, “Everything burns,” meaning that every process exists in virtue of a single in-force, peculiar to itself.

And now as a consequence there follows this question:—

“If through and through, without residue, I am a form of Kamma, where is to be found the position from which I can comprehend myself as such?” For every position, without exception, of sheer necessity must itself again be a form of Kamma.

Kamma, the in-force, is that which gives to the process concerned, to the living being, foothold, coherence, continuity.

As such it presents itself to me the individual immediately as consciousness. In consciousness I comprehend myself as a something existing in virtue of an in-force, inasmuch as consciousness on one hand is that which gives continuity to the I-process; on the other hand, however, at every moment presents a fresh biological, Kammic value, even as cannot be otherwise in any combustion process.

Be it well noted, however, Consciousness is not the Kamma. That would give us Kamma as an identity. But Kamma in the course of its self-acting development becomes consciousness. Consciousness is the ultimate value (Grenzwert), in which at every moment of its existence the form of the energy and the energy itself merge and mingle, and consequently that which gives to the I-process not only conceptual, but also actual continuity.

Faith adopts as adequate cause a transcendent force, an imperceptible to sense in itself. Science rejects all that is imperceptible to sense and adopts as the adequate cause of one occurrence other occurrences. The Buddha teaches that the actual processes have being in virtue of an in-force, i.e. an imperceptible to sense; but this imperceptible to sense is so, not “in itself,” as a transcendent in itself, but in the course of its automatic development, for the individual becomes perceptible to sense as consciousness.

It is in this sense that we are to understand the matter when the Buddha, having specified consciousness as one of the five Khandhas, thus making it a form of Kamma, upon another occasion says, “It is Cetana (thinking) that I call Kamma.” In a Burmese school I once listened to the following questions and answers: Teacher, “What is Kamma?” Pupil, “Cetana.” Teacher, “What is Cetana?” Pupil, “Kamma.”

In this sense is to be understood the frequently recurring formula: “In dependence upon individuality (nāma-rūpa) arises consciousness (viññāṇa); in dependence upon consciousness arises individuality.” For in-force, in contradistinction to a transcendent universal force, is something that only exists in dependence upon its material.

The understanding of this point will be rendered much easier by a comparison with a flame.

In a flame each moment of its existence represents a specific degree of heat which, as such, is the power to set up a succeeding moment of ignition. This power is actualized wherever and for as long as inflammable matter, fuel, is present. The inflammable matter, so to say, is the liberating provocation that causes this power, this potential energy which the flame every moment represents in virtue of its heat to enter into life, and shows it the way into living energy.

But with this conversion into living energy, i.e. with the fact that a new ignition moment is called into life, a new degree of heat, a new value in potential energy also is produced, which, as the succeeding ignition moment, anew passes over into living energy, thus forming a repetition of the whole proceeding. It is a process which may be briefly designated as a self-charging. The self-discharging, the act of the passage of potential into living energy, is simultaneously the charging anew with potential energy. Precisely in this consists the nature of the self-active. The self-active is that which possesses the faculty, the power to sustain itself; and this self-sustaining, when analyzed, exhibits itself in the form of self-charging. If potential energy has passed over into living energy, there is here no need of an accession of foreign energy to fashion a new store of potential energy. This new store is implied in the discharge itself. Energy, actual energy, is not something that must receive an impetus from without in order to come into activity, it is activity, action itself, and proves itself such by itself; and all that is necessary is to comprehend, to comprise it in this its characteristic quality.

That this perfectly natural conception to us has become so unnatural, must be laid to the charge of our habits of thought, trained one-sidedly as we have been, along the lines of mechanical views. Where something happens, we look for some impulse from without; but we ought never to forget that science does not give the actual world at all, but only a re-actual world; in which world, to be sure, impulses must be given if anything is to happen at all. The mechanical world-theory is simply a “reading” of the play of world-events in order to give computation and determination in advance; never under any circumstances does it furnish an insight into actuality itself. Actuality is action out of itself; it is the self-active. And all the insoluble problems in which science loses her way when she seeks to carry the mechanical comprehension of the play of world-events from the reversible processes where it is possible and legitimate, over to the non-reversible processes, all in the last analysis amount to this, that one is trying to demonstrate something—i.e. the biological process—from external preconditions, which along such lines can never be demonstrated, not because in itself incapable of demonstration, but because it is demonstrating itself through itself.

This the genuine thinker must absolutely hold to. Actuality is action itself, not something that first must be acted upon. Everything re-actual is thinkable only as the sequel of a push requires a push for its explanation. Everything that is actual burns.

After this, what takes place in the I-process becomes comprehensible.

Here the passing over from potential to living energy has its counterpart in the volitional movements. At every moment of its existence the I-process represents a specific value in potential energy which there where the external world enters with its “liberating” provocations, ever and again passes over into living energy as volitional movement. Every discharge in the form of a volitional movement is a charging afresh with potential energy. It is a self-sustaining proceeding in the fullest sense of the words. The volitional movements are the ever repeated new foothold which the I fashions for itself, the ever repeated “sustenance” wherewith it provides itself afresh.

The all-important point about this conception is that one should clearly see that Kamma does not, like a cord of some sort of solid material, thread itself through the I-process, as would be bound to be the case with an I-force, whether dubbed soul, or life-force, or whatever else; but that in every volitional movement it ever and again springs up anew out of a material to which it itself, in the first place, ever and again lends the power to this end. The material has to be Kammatized so as to be able to give Kamma the opportunity to spring up anew. As in the friction of one piece of wood with another, heat springs up, and ever and again springs up with each repetition of the friction, so in the friction of the I-process with the external world, with things, ever and again new volitional movements spring up. “Somewhat, O monk, as when two pieces of wood are laid one upon the other, are rubbed one against the other, heat arises, fire springs up; and when these two pieces of wood are parted, are separated, the heat that has arisen, disappears, ceases; even so, O monk, by reason of a contact of a pleasurable nature, a pleasurable sensation springs up.”⁠[3]

This the reply, the reaction peculiar to itself of the I-process to the external world, a reply, a reaction that takes the form of volitional movements, this is Kamma, the action of this I-process. That which as regards all the rest of the world is imperceptible to sense, here in the self-acting, the spontaneous development of the individual, becomes perceptible to sense. Nothing else whatever is concealed within the I-process: itself has disclosed itself. As in a flame there is nothing hidden and concealed, its activity constituting its entire being, so in the I-process there is nothing hidden and concealed. Its activity constitutes its entire being, and this activity in full entirety is disclosed in consciousness to the individual himself, and to him only. And nothing more is needed than to comprehend actuality simply as that which it is.

This insight into the I as a pure combustion process places the whole problem of existence upon an entirely new foundation.

In a combustion process every moment of its existence is a setting-up-of-life just as much as an entering-into-life. The I-process in all its activities, whether of the corporeal or of the mental variety, is a constant growing up of life itself, an arising, a perpetual refashioning, setting up anew, inasmuch as the energy perpetually works up, assimilates fresh material. Here is no I that experiences; no I that thinks, speaks, does. I do not have all this as my functions, but this doing, speaking, thinking—this itself I am. In all this I ever and again am being built anew, just as in the assimilating of the nourishment of which I partake, I ever and again am built anew,—it is all the one same process of combustion, differing only in the surrounding circumstances and antecedent conditions.

“What, O monks, is the arising of the world? By reason of the eye and of forms there arises visual consciousness. The conjunction of the three constitutes contact. In dependence upon contact arises sensation. In dependence upon sensation arises the thirst for life. In dependence upon the thirst for life arises clinging. In dependence upon clinging arises becoming. In dependence upon becoming arises birth (as the birth of a fresh biological impulsion). In dependence upon birth arises old age and death.”

This passage recurs with great frequency in the Scriptures. Following the same scheme there are next dealt with—hearing and sounds, smell and odours, taste and flavours, the body and contacts, thinking and concepts.

In every one of its activities, at every moment of its existence, the I-process is not something that possesses arising as a function, but it is the arising itself, as the flame is the arising itself. And it is the arising itself because it burns, because it exists in virtue of an individual energy. It is the thirst for life, the impulsion towards life, which upholds life, causes it ever and again to spring up anew, and is life itself; in exactly the same way that the heat of a flame upholds the flame and is the flame itself. We do not have the impulse to life—that calls for a conscious impulse—but we are the life-impulse itself.

A lay adherent upon one occasion inquires of the nun Dhammadinna:—

“Personality, personality, they say, O venerable One. But what does the Exalted One say is the personality?”

To which the nun replies:—

“The five forms of clinging (upādānakkhandhā) is the personality, the Exalted One has said; these namely: the form of clinging that refers to body, the form of clinging that refers to sensation, the form of clinging that refers to perception, the form of clinging that refers to discriminations, the form of clinging that refers to consciousness....”

“The arising of personality, the arising of personality, they say, O venerable One. But what, O venerable One, does the Exalted One say is the arising of personality?”

“This thirst for life (taṇhā) that leads to re-birth, bound up with lust and craving, now here, now there, revelling in delight—namely, the impulse towards sensuality, the impulse towards existence, the impulse towards present well-being (without regard to any possible future). This, friend, so the Exalted One has said, is the arising of personality.”⁠[4]

The distinction between faith and science on the one hand and the Buddha on the other, may be formulated thus:—

According to faith, living beings all possess as adequate cause for their existence a transcendent force, usually called “soul.” According to science, living beings as well as all re-actual processes, have their adequate cause entirely in what is perceptible to sense; which means that science derives living beings simply and solely from their begetters—mother and father—thus entangling herself in her insoluble problem of heredity. The Buddha on his part teaches that every being is adequate cause to itself. As a flame maintains itself by its own heat, so every I-process maintains itself by its volitional movements.

Now it is an incontestable biological fact that man, and along with him a considerable proportion of the animal world, originate in the union of a maternal ovum-cell with a paternal sperm-cell. How can the teaching of the Buddha that beings are their own adequate causes be brought into line with this fact?

It is just here that the Buddha breaks with vulgar thinking in a manner that at first sight seems out of all reason.

He teaches that that which mother and father furnish in the act of union is only, so to speak, the material of the new living being, only represents the possibility of a new individuality; that this material is developed into an individuality only through the advent of an individual energy. “By the conjunction of three things, O monks, does the formation of a germ of life come about. If mother and father come together, but it is not the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period, but the exciting impulse does not present itself, a germ of life is not planted. If, however, O monks, mother and father come together and it is the mother’s proper period, and the exciting impulse presents itself, then a germ of life is there planted.”⁠[5]

As the igniting spark catches, breaks in, and, taking the kindling wood and the oxygen of the atmosphere which, but for its advent, would have lain beside one another for long enough without any reaction, fuses them together into the individuality, “flame,” so does the individual energy joining up with the material of procreation, fuse ovum- and sperm-cell together into the new personality.

This “in-breaking” energy that joins up with the raw material of procreation,—this is the Kamma of some other existence which has been unable any longer to maintain its form against the pressure of the external world, an occurrence which we usually denominate “death.” The Kamma of the disintegrating existence—so the Buddha teaches—at the moment of death passes over into a new abode, plants itself, breaks in here in new inflammable material, kindles a new I-process, fashions a new I-sayer. And as the igniting spark becomes the flame by developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which it has taken hold, so does Kamma become the new form of existence by developing itself, growing, unfolding along with the material of which it has taken hold. In other words, I am the form of my Kamma. I am my Kamma corporealised.

This Kamma series it is which constitutes the actual genealogical tree of a living being. As the genealogical tree of a fire does not lead in the direction of the forest or the coal-mine whence its material was derived, but back to the flame from out of which the kindling spark took hold, so the genealogical tree of living beings does not run back in the direction of progenitors but in the direction of the Kamma, the direction of a disintegrating existence. “Heirs of deeds,” therefore, the Buddha calls living beings, not heirs of mother and father; and, “springing from the womb of Kamma (kammayonī).” The Kamma, in virtue of which I now say “I,” derives from a previous existence; the “I-sayer” of this previous existence, on his part again, derives from a previous existence, and so on further and further back in a series that never has had a beginning. At every moment of my existence I am the final member of a beginningless series of “I-sayers.” The Kamma at this moment active in me—it has never not existed, never not been active. This is what means a self-sustaining process. Such a process can never have had a beginning; for then it would be no self-sustaining thing, it would have been created, either by a god, or by external circumstances and antecedent conditions. It would be no actual process but a product. As soon as clear cognition brings me the insight that I am a pure process of combustion, i.e. sustain myself, along with that insight is given as a logical necessity beginninglessness.

Individual beginninglessness is the key-word, the guiding clue to the Buddha-thought. In it is exhausted the teaching of Kamma. The I-process has its in-force, its Kamma from out a previous existence. Otherwise expressed: The I-process is not the result of an impact, has not been set going, but burns on from beginninglessness down to this present moment, itself ever and again perpetuating itself. Whenever an existence disintegrates, the Kamma in virtue of which it has been burning takes hold anew in a new location and there sets alight a new I-process that unfolds itself into a new personality. The Buddha teaches re-births.

The self-perpetuation of the individual energies, the Kammas, in the formation of ever new individualities, is by the Buddha called “Samsāra.”

This word is most frequently translated, “the circling round of re-births,”—a rendering that may easily lead to a false conception. Where the entire universe is nothing but a huge summation of single combustion processes, there no circling round can be; there each moment of existence always and everywhere is something that never before has been and never again will be. With the translation “circling round of re-births,” one only works with physics and its reversible processes; one is in danger of apprehending life mechanically. As a matter of fact, “Samsāra” means nothing but the “together-wandering,” the ascent and descent of the beings in the universe, that ever and again, now here now there, come into manifestation anew, according as their Kamma here or there takes hold.

“Without beginning, without end is this Samsāra. A beginning of beings encompassed by nescience who, fettered by the thirst for life, pass on to ever new births, verily is not to be perceived.”

The thinking man naturally asks, “Is there any proof of such a teaching? or must it simply be believed?” In the latter case it were as worthless to the genuine thinker as is every religion of faith. Whether I call that on which I believe, force or energy, god or Kamma, makes no essential difference.

But to this question there are two answers—an answer of a real, and an answer of an abstract nature.

The answer of real nature is supplied by the Buddha when he affirms of himself that simultaneously with the attainment of his Buddha-knowledge, he acquired the faculty of remembering his previous forms of existence back into eras of time the most stupendously remote. He teaches, however, that every one who, like himself, has wrestled his way to the same knowledge, obtains this same capacity of calling to remembrance his previous states of existence.

Now the Buddha-knowledge is no supernatural illumination, but consists simply of a clear insight into the nature of my own existence—or rather, in the removal of a false conception as to myself, the conception of the “I” as an identity. To attain to this insight, all that is needed is reflection and instruction. This seemingly supernatural character of the faculty of remembering previous existences is thus “supernatural” only in the sense that the telephone or the Röntgen ray or wireless telegraphy is supernatural to untutored savages. We are merely lacking in the prerequisite conditions as respects cognition, and in the intellectual technique.

This much safely may be said, that the biological possibility of memory of the distant past can only be brought to bear upon the several existences in so far as these themselves have run their course in touch with the power of memory, in touch with consciousness. To try to make this faculty extend over the embryonal periods also, would be absurd, since here the organic possibilities of such memory—the sense-organs, namely—are not developed, and so there is nothing there for one to remember. Hence, when he speaks of his previous existences the Buddha says, not, “I remember having left such and such a womb,” but, “I remember having been of such a name, such a family, such a rank, such a calling; having experienced such and such weal and woe, and such a departure from life.” Here what is meant by the constantly recurring phrase “evam āyupariyanto”—“thus was the term, the end of my life”—is not physical death, but the ending of that section of the individuality which runs its course self-illuminated, under the designation of consciousness. This end may indeed synchronize with the physical end, death, but it may also precede it by a longer or shorter period of time.

In corresponding terms the Buddha goes on to say, “Departing thence, elsewhere I appeared anew. There now I was, bore such a name,” and so on. The memories of the past adhere only to those phases of existence that are illumined by consciousness.

It may be asked, “By what means is it possible to acquire such a faculty of remembering the distant past?”

I reply, “I do not know.” I can only suggest an analogy. One must extinguish one’s own light in order to see the light that shines through the chink in a neighbouring room. In somewhat the same fashion, a man must have extinguished his own light—the notion of an I-identity—and won to the Buddha-knowledge, in order to see himself emerge recurrently as a something luminous in consciousness further and yet further away in the “dark backward and abysm of time,”—one lucent phase, ever and again revealing itself, anterior to the other, until the last faint glimmer is lost in the dim dusk teeming with life, of the beginningless infinitudes.

The Buddha himself instances a definite limit to the capacity to recall to memory past existences, up to which limit he himself attained. Here we have the best possible proof that we have to do, not with a supernatural enlightenment, a species of omniscience, but simply with an intellectual technique which as being purely intellectual, presupposes a certain grade of cognition. If we may put any confidence in the texts, there were in the days of the Buddha, and in those days of which the “Chants of the monks and nuns” tell us, quite a large number of persons who had acquired this faculty. If some one here interjects, “Such a thing is impossible!” he resembles a man at the foot of a hill to whom another standing on the top has described what he sees from that point of vantage, and who retorts, “It is quite impossible that you should see all this. I have eyes in my head as well as you. I look upon the same world as you do and I perceive nothing whatever of all this. Consequently your imagination must be playing tricks with you.”

So much for the real answer. The abstract answer presents itself in the light of an intellectual necessity.

Kamma is that which gives continuity to the I-process. As such it presents itself to me the individual immediately as consciousness. Consciousness, rightly comprehended, tells me that the I-process gives to itself its own coherence; which means that it is self-acting; which in turn means that it is beginningless. I experience the self-perpetuation, the burning of the I-process in consciousness. But just as Kamma conducts from one moment of existence to the next, so does it conduct from one existence to the next.

Should one wish to render this procedure in comprehensible language, one can come at it no otherwise than simply by saying, “Consciousness passes over from existence to existence.” “Kamma” in itself conveys no more meaning than, for example, the word I, which indicates anybody and everybody without distinction, and only acquires actual significance with reference to myself. In exactly the same way “Kamma,” the force in virtue of which every single living creature has being, acquires actual significance only as my own consciousness. Kamma as such has being only as consciousness.

It is in this sense that those passages are to be understood, so obscure to our scholars, in which the Buddha speaks of viññāṇa (consciousness) as that which plants itself in the new womb. Addressing his disciple Ānanda, he says, “If, Ānanda, consciousness did not pass into the womb, would it then be possible for the (new) individuality to differentiate itself?”⁠[6]

Among the Theras of Ceylon the established expression for the Kamma that passes over from one existence to the next is paṭisandhiviññāṇa, a word which means “the again-linking-up consciousness,” the consciousness that ever and again supplies the bond between existence and existence.

That there is here no thought of consciousness as “something in itself,” as soul, as an identity, is made abundantly clear in the following passage:—

A monk named Sati, as the outcome of his own cogitations, arrives at the conclusion that “consciousness” is something that in the progress of re-births passes over as anaññaŋ, as “not-other”—that is, as an identity, as a spiritual substance. He is reprimanded by the Buddha in these words: “Have not I in many and diverse ways expounded consciousness as something arising always in dependence upon somewhat? Without adequate cause there is no coming to be of consciousness.”⁠[7]

To much the same effect runs a passage in the Visuddhi Magga:—

“But it is to be understood that this latter consciousness (that of the new existence is meant) did not come to the present existence from the previous one, and also that it is only to causes contained in the old existence that its present appearance is due.”⁠[8]

Only when one understands that Viññāṇa (consciousness) is Kamma itself, does a “consciousness” that passes over from existence to existence become divested of its seeming senselessness.

When, for example, I say, “The American heat-wave has passed over to Europe,” this does not mean that an absolutely definite something called “heat-wave” has set out on a journey. It only means that certain pulses of energy which manifest themselves to sense under the form of a wave of heat are making their presence known in a new locality. In just the same way, when I say, “Consciousness passes over from one existence to another,” this does not mean that an absolutely definite something called “consciousness” goes forth upon its travels, but that the pulse of energy of the I-process which, wherever it is present at all as such manifests itself as consciousness, makes its presence known in a new location. Should any one insist upon conceiving of the heat-wave as a something travelling, he would rightly become the butt of ridicule. In similar wise, the scholars of the west with their profound researches into this “consciousness” that passes over from existence to existence, make fair marks for jest and laughter. Here, of course, they are only working further along in the tracks of physiology and biology, both of which so long as they seek for a “seat” of consciousness, labour under a like tragi-comic misconception.

No good purpose is to be served by instancing here in detail all the crass misconceptions of which our western scholars are guilty in the interpretation of this point. That would only be to burden this book on its way with quite unnecessary ballast. Wherever the reader meets with such misconceptions, he can correct them for himself on the lines of the foregoing explanations. In passing, however, it may be mentioned that he will meet with such misconceptions in pretty nearly every book about Buddhism.

And now we stand confronted by the question:—

“After what fashion is one to picture to oneself the passing over of Kamma from one existence to another?”

To us in the West who have been reared in the mechanistic views of science and admit of the inductive method alone in argument, this seems the point most obscure among all the obscurities we find in the Buddha-thought. In the Buddha’s days, however, this point seems to have been so completely free from anything savouring of the problematical that the Buddha himself would seem never to have found it necessary to express himself categorically upon it.

If to-day one asks the Theras in Ceylon or Burma how one ought to think of this passing over, one receives the unfailing reply, “It is not the case that ‘something’ passes over.”

Here one must fall back upon the works of the commentators for fuller information.

In the Milinda Pañha (the Questions of King Milinda), a work that in Ceylon is held in the highest esteem, there occurs the following passage:—

(The King says): “Bhante (Reverend Sir) Nagasena, does the connection (with the next existence) take place without anything passing over?” (The Monk Nagasena replies): “Yes, great King, the connection takes place without anything passing over.” “Give me an example of connection taking place without anything passing over!” “Suppose a man to light one lamp at another, does one light here pass over to the other?” “No, bhante.” “In just the same way the connection takes place without anything passing over.”⁠[9]

Hereupon the question arises:—

“This previous existence of which I am the immediate continuation—am I this itself or am I another?”

A further passage in the same book, the Milinda Pañha, runs:—

“He who is born—is he the same or is he another?” “Neither the same, neither another.”

“Give me an illustration!” “Suppose a man to light a lamp: would it burn the whole night through?” “Yes, it would burn the whole night through.” “Now, is the flame of the first watch the same with the flame of the middle watch?” “No, indeed!” “Or is the flame of the middle watch the same with the flame of the last watch?” “No, indeed!” “Then is the lamp of the first watch one, the lamp of the middle watch another, and the lamp of the last watch yet another?” “No, indeed! In dependence upon one and the same (lamp) the light burns all the night through.” “Even so does the continuity of men and things come about. One arises, another passes away. On the instant, as it were, without before or after, the linking up is effected. Thus it is not oneself, nor yet is it another, that passes on (and constitutes) each last present phase of consciousness.”

With this we arrive at the crucial point. The passing over ensues on the instant, immediately, not in space and time.

Buddhism, if it is to satisfy the thinker, here will have to come to an understanding with modern physics. In a succeeding essay this will be attempted. For the present, as preliminary, we hold fast only to the fact.

The I-process as being the form of an in-force, at every moment of its existence represents a certain value in potential energy, a certain unique state of tension, an individual tendency. This tendency it is which at the breaking up of the old form immediately establishes itself in the new location.

But where? Is this new location always ready waiting to take up the new Kamma?

A universe that consists of nothing but a huge summation of combustion processes, finds itself, so to speak, in a perpetual status nascens. Here every fresh moment represents a new, unique, biological, Kammic value, which as such never before has been and never again will be.

Now all actual happenings come to pass in virtue of peculiar attunements—in the language of chemistry, specific affinities. A body, a process, acts upon another because in virtue of its peculiar attunement it can and must act on that other. But where the entire universe is a something existing in a perpetual status nascens, there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as a being attuned, but only an each-after-other self-attuning, taking place anew with each new moment. The entire actual happenings of a world from this point of view become something that does not have laws, but is law itself; a thought as sublime as it is terrible. The significance of Buddhism for a morality is completely dominated by it.

Hence, where the actual play of world-events alone is in question, the same is indicated by the word “Dhamma” (law or norm). All beings, even as they are Sankhāra, are also Dhamma.⁠[10] Kamma, the individual in-force, at the break up of the form, will “take hold” anew there where in the beginningless each-after-other self-attunement of the play of world-events, it can take hold—indeed, must take hold. This “taking hold” anew is not something that has law, that runs its appointed course according to definite laws, but it is law itself.

Now Kamma, as individual in-force, is a something unique. It is itself and nothing else besides, as it manifests itself in me the individual; for my consciousness tells me that I am a something unique, that I am myself and nothing else besides.

As a something unique, it must also be uniquely attuned to its new location. There will be one single location which, out of the endless host of world-events, will correspond to the Kamma of the disintegrating existence, will answer to it. We all eat out of the one dish—every one eater for himself.

This unique attunement, however, implies immediate passing over as a logical necessity. If Kamma passed over in space and time, this passing over would be a new self-attunement at innumerable points. Immediate passing over and unique attunement are two different expressions for one and the same event.

We shall have to dwell upon this idea at greater length in another place. Here I conclude with the caution that the Kamma-teaching of the Buddha is not to be confounded with the teaching of the transmigration of the soul found in pantheistic systems. The two have nothing, absolutely nothing, in common with one another except the words “Samsāra” and “re-births.” Language is no more than a servant. It serves one master just as well as another. To seek to deduce community of essence from similarities in terminology is a piece of idle trifling of which many an expositor of Buddhism is most unwarrantably guilty. It is no very difficult matter to “support” the words of the Buddha with quite a host of sayings culled from the works of mystics and pantheists—and scientists also, if one so chooses. But in good sooth, to him who understands, all this only makes needless ballast, and to him who does not understand, needless perplexity.

A transmigration of the soul requires something persistent, something eternal, a unity in itself. “As the worm from leaf to leaf”—runs the illustration in the Upanishads—“so goes the soul (the Atman, the true Self) from existence to existence.”

For the Buddha there is no such “something in itself.” For the real, genuine thinker life is a thing that at every moment wholly and completely arises anew. Life is this arising itself, just as a flame is the arising itself. Any kind of persisting something here is not to be found. Every moment of existence is a new, biological, Kammic value, whereof the prerequisite condition, the adequate cause, resides solely in the previous moment, while itself is prerequisite condition, adequate cause to the moment succeeding. No continuity is present, as a Being, as a true I, a something identical with itself, but with each new moment the continuity is formed anew; every moment is the last link in a beginningless series; every now the final result of an individual combustion process that, hither descended from past beginninglessness, continues to burn on through future endlessness; the Kamma whereof, as oft as one form falls to pieces, without break seizes hold of a new raw-material. It is no persisting something in itself that passes over; it is the individual tendency, the predispositions, the character, the consciousness, or whatever else one has a mind to call the value in potential energy represented by the I-process at its disintegration, that passes over, by immediately taking effect, striking in, imparting the new impulse to the material to which it is uniquely attuned—the material that appeals to it alone of all that is present, and to which it alone of all that is present, answers.

Yet once more:—

Kamma is no cord binding the existences together—as little so as the lightning of the firmament is a cord. The notion of a persisting “self” or “soul” is repeatedly and emphatically repudiated.

“Further, one may entertain the notion: ‘This identical self of mine, I maintain, is veritably to be found now here, now there, reaping the fruits of its good and of its evil deeds; and this my self is a thing permanent, constant, eternal, not subject to change, and so abides for ever.’ But this, monks, is a walking in mere opinion, a resorting to mere notions, a barren waste of views, an empty display of views; this is merely to writhe, caught in the toils of views”; runs a passage in the second Sutta of the Majjhima Nikāya. While we find Buddhaghosa’s great commentary, the Visuddhi Magga, saying: “There is no entity, no living principle, no elements of being, transmigrated from the last existence into the present one.”

I sum up in brief what has gone before.

The Buddha teaches:—

All actual processes are combustion processes.

They burn in virtue of purely individual in-forces (Kammas).

As such they are self-sustaining processes.

As such they are beginningless.

They have sustained themselves from beginninglessness down to the present by volitional activities.

With the Kamma-teaching the significance of Buddhism for a world-conception is given in all its amplitude.

To possess a world-conception means to comprehend the play of world-events.

To comprehend means to comprehend adequate causes.

Adequate causes must be forces.

Forces of necessity must be something imperceptible to sense.

As such they must lie beyond the reach of all comprehension.

An exception to this is constituted by one single process—the I, the individual himself; inasmuch as the in-force, in virtue of which I have my being, becomes perceptible to sense in consciousness.

This given, the whole problem here focuses itself, as it were automatically, into one point, forth from which every genuine view of the world must necessarily proceed—one’s own I.

Whilst faith conceives of the I from a transcendental standpoint, i.e. believes; whilst science strains itself to conceive of the I from the standpoint of the material world, i.e. inductively; the Buddha conceives of it from the standpoint of itself, i.e. intuitively.

Along with my comprehension of myself is comprehended the entire residue of the world. If I myself have being in virtue of a purely individual in-force, then all remaining actual processes also have being in virtue of purely individual in-forces, and I comprehend them all—i.e. the world—as thereby beyond being comprehended; not as being incomprehensible in themselves—that were a self-evident contradiction—but as so fashioned that each of them can only comprehend itself.

Here it may be objected:—

A world-conception that teaches me to comprehend the world as being incomprehensible—is it not just as much of the nature of a paradox as the world-conception of faith?

To this the answer is:—

The demand for a view of the world is not to be taken literally as such. If a freezing man says, “I much need a coat,” it is not the coat in itself of which he has need, but the warmth that the coat will procure him. In the selfsame way, when an uninstructed person says, “I much need a view of the world,” what he would fain comprehend is not the world in itself, but that which furnishes internal support, coherence, to the play of world-events. In reality, every world-conception means nothing else but a comprehension of the something that persists throughout the play of world-events, that remains constant through all vicissitude,—hence, a satisfaction of the idea of conservation.

This idea of conservation religious faith endeavours to satisfy with its “force in itself,” God. Scientific faith endeavours to satisfy it with “matter,” which is just as much a thing of faith as is “force.” Actuality knows neither force by itself nor matter by itself; it only knows the unity of both: processes. One is just “believing” when one operates abstractly with either of these two opposites; and to operate with them other than abstractly is quite impossible.

Out of itself does science provide satisfaction for the idea of conservation in the cosmogony of energetics; this it does, however, by furnishing not actual energies but only the reactions of energies.

An actual conservation, and therewith an actual world-view is furnished by the Buddha alone when he points out that every living being is a something self-sustaining; in other words, that there is no such thing as an “I,” considered as identical with itself, as a unity in itself.

The same, to be sure, is said by every school of criticism. Hume and modern psychology say so with unequivocal clearness, but none of them go beyond negation. They confine themselves to Socratic knowledge. Alone the Buddha says, “I not only am aware that I am no true I, as a unity in itself, but I also know what it is that I am. And that this has really been comprehended by me,—this I prove in my own person. For, from the moment that I comprehended myself as a process sustaining itself from beginninglessness down to the present hour by its own volitional activities, all volitional activities have wholly ceased in me. A new up-welling of in-force, any further self-charging of the I-process, has no more place in me. I know; this is my last existence. When it breaks up, there is no more Kamma there to take fresh hold in any new location, be it in heavenly, be it in earthly worlds. The beginningless process of combustion is expiring, is coming to an end of itself, like the flame that is fed by no more oil.”

This thought which finds expression in the four propositions concerning suffering and the Nibbāna teaching, sums up the significance of Buddhism for morality and religion, and its amplification, therefore, belongs to the successor to this volume. Here it is only interesting to us from the epistemological point of view, i.e. in so far as it makes ignorance as to oneself the antecedent condition of all life. For—

I sustain my own existence through the perpetually renewed up-welling of volitional activities. It is possible for these to spring up again and again only so long as an object for my willing is present, i.e. so long as the delusion of identity is not put an end to. The moment any being arrives at the insight that there are in truth no identities—that there are nothing but flickering, flaring processes of combustion, which are one thing when I crave for them, another when I stretch forth my hand to seize them, and yet again another when I have seized them and hold them fast, he stops short, begins to reflect; and in reflection the blind impulse to live is sapped and weakened. The knowledge is borne in upon him: “It is not worth the seizing.”

So long as I take a glittering object in the grass for a diamond, I will clutch at it, scuffle for it—mayhap enter on a life-and-death struggle to obtain it. But the moment I perceive, “It is a dewdrop in which a sunbeam is reflected,” I trouble myself no more about it. I know “A shake, a gust of wind—and all is over!”

So is it with the genuine thinker in face of the world and its values, whether they be called wife or child, money or possessions, fame or honour, family or home. One clear, piercing, scrutinizing glance is more than they will bear. To the penetrating mind, the wretchedness of transiency is everywhere manifest—he turns away—it is not worth while!

To Sakka, the king of the gods, the Buddha imparts the following instruction:—

“Then, chief of the gods, a monk hears: ‘All that is, when clung to, falls short.’ And when, chief of the gods, a monk has heard: ‘All that is, when clung to, falls short,’ he closely observes each and every thing. In the close observation of each and every thing he sees into each and every thing. And seeing into each and every thing, whatsoever sensation he experiences, whether pleasurable or unpleasurable, or neither pleasurable nor unpleasurable, in all these sensations he abides in the insight that they are transient, so that he cares naught for them, ceases from them, renounces them. And abiding as respects these sensations in such insight, he clings to nothing whatsoever in all the world. Clinging to nothing in the world, he is free from fear. Free from fear he attains to his own extinction of delusion.”⁠[11]

This insight that ignorance as to one’s own self is the antecedent condition of all existence, is formulated by the Buddha in the so-called “Causal Chain.”⁠[12]

It is not the intention of this book to furnish a fully rounded statement of Buddhism, and so I am at liberty here to confine myself to what is necessary for our immediate purpose. To attempt to deal in detail with all the many mistakes that have here been made by western expositors would require a whole book to itself.

The Causal Chain consists of twelve links, on which account it is also alluded to under the name of the “Twelve Nidānas.”

The twelve links of the chain are: 1. Ignorance (Avijjā); 2. Predispositions, Tendencies (Sankhāra); 3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa); 4. Individuality (Nāma-rūpa); 5. The seat of sense; 6. Contact; 7. Sensation; 8. Thirst of life (Taṇhā); 9. Clinging (Upādāna); 10. Becoming (Bhava); 11. Birth (Jāti); 12. A Complex consisting of the essential ingredients of all existence—namely, old age, death, misery, lamentation, sorrow, grief, and despair.

This “Chain” is translated by the great majority of occidental expositors of Buddhism thus: “Out of Ignorance arise the Predispositions. Out of the Predispositions arises Consciousness,” and so forth.

Such a translation is at one and the same time incorrect as regards the wording and misleading as regards the meaning. For here the separate links of the chain are placed with regard to each other in the relationship of cause and effect, in the purely physical sense in which the two represent a following after one another. But in order to have a pure following after one another of cause and effect, there are needed artificial preconditions such as physics puts for herself when she works with “bodies,”—that is, with fixed magnitudes complete in themselves. Actuality, however, knows nothing of any such things. Actuality knows only processes which at every moment of their existence represent a new biological value.

Only where “bodies” in this purely physical sense are presumed to exist, can one speak of a following after one another of cause and effect;—a mode of representing matters that is ridiculed by men of insight among physicists themselves. E. Mach, for example, makes fun of it in the humorous phrase: “Upon a dose of cause there follows a dose of effect”; whereby, to be sure, himself, and with him the whole of modern positivism whose mouthpiece he is,⁠[13] falls into the opposite extreme, inasmuch as he seeks to substitute for the conception of causality of scholasticism—the following after one another of cause and effect—dependence outside of time, as represented by the concept of mathematical function.

In sooth, one position is as far removed from actuality as the other. Every causal relation existing in actuality runs its course on the lines—to take an example—of seed and tree, where the causal relation is neither a pure, unmixed following after one another, nor yet a lying alongside one another outside of time, but a combination of following after and lying alongside one another.

This combination of succession and juxtaposition is implied, moreover, in the Pāḷi word, paccayā, used to express the connecting together of the separate links. Verbally correct and true to the meaning, the Causal Chain would be translated as follows:—

“Ignorance must be present in order that Tendencies may come to pass. Tendencies must be present in order that Viññāṇa may come to pass;—which latter here signifies Consciousness as passing-over Kamma; for this passing-over Kamma does not admit being spoken of otherwise than in the form of consciousness. This passing-over Kamma must be present in order that the fashioning of a new Individuality may come to pass. This latter must be present in order that a referring back of all the Six Kinds of Sense-Impressions to myself may come to pass. This must be present in order that Contact, an approaching on my part to things whether physical or mental, may come to pass. Contact must be present in order that Sensation, this in order that Craving, this in order that Clinging, this in order that the perpetually repeated, new upspringing of the I-process may come about which here is disintegrated in the stage of Passing-over (Bhava) and the final result (Jāti),⁠[14] the Coming-into-manifestation of a new Kammic impulsion within this my personality; whereupon the last link follows as a natural consequence.”