The Mahiiyiinamind. Building on the traditions of the earlier Abhidharmikasi
Y ogacarin thinkers give what amounts to a rather more complex
account of the sixth, mind consciousness, focusing on what are
in effect the deeper layers of the mind. The active or surface level
of the mind continues to be seen as comprising six type of con•
sciousness: our primary awareness of five type,s of sense data
and our conscious thoughts, which for human beings are mostly
related to the former in various ways. But underpinning these
types of active consciousness are two further types of conscious-'
ness which are crucial in creating the world as we ordinarily
experience it. The first is 'the defiled mind' (kl~{a-manas), so called
because it is afflicted with four basic defilements: the view of indi-
viduality, the conceit 'I am', clinging to self and delusion.^40 The
object of this defilement, what the defiled mind in some way takes
as the self, is the eighth consciousness, 'the store consciousness'
(iilaya-vijniina).^41 Below the threshold of consciousness proper;^42the store consciousness is the particular repository of all the seeds
sown by the defilements of a being's active consciousness; it is
the result of a being's past karma, the accumulation of all past
tendencies, strong or weak, to greed, hatred, and delusion; as such
the store consciousness is also the condition for the perpetu-
ation of these defilements in present and future active conscious-
ness; it thus continually interacts with active consciousness
according to the principles of dependent arising,^43 Of course, the
store consciousness is not a self, a thing in itself; what, in our
subconscious, the defiled mind takes for a self is merely an
underlying mass of ever changing causes and conditions, arising
and falling, but which none the less, as it flows on, maintains a
certain pattern which gives it the appearance of relative identity.
The store consciousness is thus the underlying basis and support
(iisraya) of our conscious lives: the largely hidden heart of our
personalities.
The world of experience has three different natures (tri-
svabhiiva). Clearly something is going on: we have experiences.
The problem, according to the Y ogacara, is that what we
experience is ourselves as conscious subjects enjoying a world
of objects that exist 'out there', independently from us. This is