Ânanda now proposes to solve the problem by locating the soul outside the body. He says that the soul is like a candle-light placed without this hall. Where the light shines everything is visible, but within the room there are no candles burning, and therefore here prevails nothing but darkness. This explains the incapacity of the soul to see the inside of the body. But the Buddha argues that “it is impossible for the soul to be outside. If so, what the soul feels may not be felt by the body, and what the body feels may not be felt by the soul, as there is no relationship between the two. The fact, however, is that when you, Ânanda, see my hand thus stretched, you are conscious that you have the perception of {159} it. As far as there is a correspondence between the soul and the body, the soul cannot be said to be residing outside the body.” The third hypothesis assumed by Ânanda is that the soul hides itself just behind the sense-organs. Suppose a man put a pair of lenses over his eyes. Cannot he see the outside world through them? The reason why it cannot see the inside is that it resides within the sense-organs. But says the Buddha: “When we have a lens over an eye, we perceive this lens as well as the outside world. If the soul is hidden behind the sense-organ, why does it not see the sense-organ itself? As it does not in fact, it cannot be residing in the place you mention.” Ananda proposes another theory. “Within, we have the stomach, liver, heart, etc.: without, we have so many orifices. Where the internal organs are, there is darkness; but where we have openings, there is light. Close the eyes and the soul sees the darkness inside. Open the eyes and it sees the brightness outside. What do you say to this theory?” The Buddha says: “If you take the darkness you see when the eyes are closed for your inside, do you consider this darkness as something confronting your soul, or not? In the first case, wherever there prevails a darkness, that must be thought to be your interior organs. In the latter case, seeing is impossible, for seeing presupposes the existence of subject and object. Besides this, there is another difficulty. Granting {160} your supposition that the eye could turn itself inward or outward and see the darkness of the interior or the brightness of the external world, it could also see your own face when the eye is opened. If it could not do so, it must be said to be incapable of turning the sight inward.” The fifth assumption as made by Ânanda is that the soul is the essence of understanding or intelligence, which is not within, nor without, nor in the middle, but which comes into actual existence as soon as it confronts the objective world, for it is taught by the Buddha that the world exists on account of the mind and the mind on account of the world.