This notion of pure contentless consciousness is immediate and abstract and as such is at once mediated by other necessary phases. Thus we see that this pure contentless universal consciousness is the same as the ego-universal (_asmitāmātra_). For this contentless universal consciousness is only another name for the contentless unlimited, infinite of the ego-universal. A quotation from Fichte may here be useful as a comparison. Thus he says in the introduction to his _Science of Ethics_: “How an object can ever become a subject, or how a being can ever become an object of representation: this curious change will never be explained by anyone who does not find a point where the objective and subjective are not distinguished at all, but are altogether one. Now such a point is established by, and made the starting point of our system. This point is the Egohood, the Intelligence, Reason, or whatever it may be named.”[26] The _Vyāsa-bhāshya_, II. 19, describes it as _liṅgamātram mahattatvaṃ sattāmātre mahati ātmani_, and again in I. 36 we find it described as the waveless ocean, peaceful infinite pure egohood. This obscure egohood is known merely as being. This mahat has also been spoken of by Vijñāna Bhikshu as the manas, or mind, as it has the function of assimilation (_niścaya_). Now what we have already said about mahat will, we hope, make it clear that this mahat is the last limit at which the subject and the object can be considered as one indistinguishable point which is neither the one nor the other, but the source of both. This buddhi is thus variously called _mahat_, _asmitāmātra_, _manas_, _sattva_, _buddhi_ and _liṅga_, according to the aspects from which this state is observed. This state is called mahat as it is the most universal thing conceivable and the one common source from which all other things originate. Now this phase of sattva or pure shining naturally passes into the other phase, that of the Ego as knower or Ego as subject. The first phase as mahat or asmitāmātra was the state in which the sattva was predominant and the rajas and tamas were in a suppressed condition. The next moment is that in which the rajas comes uppermost, and thus the ego as the subject of all cognition—the subject I—the knower of all the mental states—is derived. The contentless subject-objectless “I” is the passive sattva aspect of the buddhi catching the reflection of the spirit of purusha.