“If the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects do not come within the range of vision, and (as a consequence) no corresponding interaction takes place, then a corresponding moment of consciousness does not result. If the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects come within the range of vision, and (nevertheless) no corresponding interaction takes place, then also a corresponding moment of consciousness does not result. If, however, the inward eye is undamaged, and external objects come within the range of vision, and the corresponding interaction takes place, then there results the corresponding moment of consciousness.”[23] Thus my entire individuality, the totality of individual experience is a _becoming conscious_ at every moment of existence. Consciousness is a Sankhāra, like all else, distinguished therefrom only in this, that in it Kamma itself becomes perceptible to sense. Were teleology and mechanistics to come before the Buddha and say, “Decide thou! Which of us two is right? Is the eye born of seeing, or is seeing born of the eye? Is the brain born of thinking, or is thinking born of the brain?” the Buddha would reply with a smile:-- “My young friends, you are both right because you are both wrong. Your question is not correctly put. There are no such things as ‘eye’ and ‘brain’ in the sense in which you use the words. There is only an _I_-process, that unfolds itself by way of certain differentiations which in themselves run their course at a pace sufficiently slow to justify such separate verbal designations as the ‘eye,’ the ‘brain,’ and so forth. Your question, ‘Is the eye born of seeing, or is seeing born of the eye? Is the brain born of thinking, or is thinking born of the brain?’ would have sense and meaning only if the eye and the brain were in themselves organs all finished and complete, to which in that case a specific function also would have to correspond. All this, however, is nothing but a phase, nothing but the form of development assumed by a single process. It is not the eye that sees: _you_ see. The eye is neither born of seeing, nor yet is seeing born of the eye; the eye is simply _the form under which seeing exists_. You do not see _with_ the eye but in virtue of the fact of eye-evolution, the same as you think in virtue of the fact of brain-evolution, which is only another way of saying that you are the form assumed by individual energies.”