Note AJ — Chapter III

In the place of a "sphere of being," with its supply of ready-made consciousness for the transmissive process in the brain, as hypothecated by Professor William James in his lecture on Human Immortality, I would substitute a formative faculty immanent in the universe, and assume the metamorphosis into consciousness, as we know it, to be a function of the brain. This theory would be quite reconcileable with the physiological view that consciousness is the final phase of the activity of the sensory nerves in the cortex of that organ. Fechner's conception of a psycho-physical threshold would also adapt itself to this theory as well as to the other; the threshold being understood as representing the functional capacity of the brain to extend or limit the scope of consciousness. The ultimate extension of consciousness would result in a return to the elemental informative. In the case of limited extension, consciousness would be carried on as a consciousness-germ, or Skandha, into a new being, on the death of a being.