The Householder's Dharma (Ratnakaranda-Sravakachara)

beyond these signs into a knowledge of the outer world, we must posit an interpreter who shall read back these signs into their objective meaning. But that interpreter, again, must implicitly contain the meaning of the universe within itself; and these signs are really but excitations which cause the soul to unfold what is within itself. Inasmuch as by common consent the soul communicates with the outer world only through these signs, and never comes nearer to the object than such signs can bring it, it follows that the principles of interpretation must be in the mind itself, and that the resulting construction is primarily only an expression of the mind's own nature. All reaction is of this sort; it expresses the nature of the reacting agent, and knowledge comes under the same head."

It is, indeed, impossible to maintain that the brain not only secretes consciousness as the liver secretes bile, but deposits at its bottom a spectator, or an interpreter, as well, and also supplies him with the whole code of the principles of interpretation of nervous signs. We must, therefore, concede that the interpreter is, from the very commencement, equipped with the code of the principles of interpretation, that is to say, is the knowing subject. The brain is at best only an instrument of analysis, as Bergson suggests in his 'Matter and Memory.' There can be no recollection unless the identity of the person who recalls a past experience with the one who had undergone it is present in consciousness. "To remember the experiences of another," says Maher, "would be to remember having been somebody else: in other words, to