Observations placeholder

Asvaghosha - The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana translated by D T Suzuki

Five different names are given to the ego.

The first name is activity-consciousness in the sense that through the agency of ignorance an unenlightened mind begins to be disturbed.

The second name is evolving-consciousness, in the sense that when the mind is disturbed, there evolves that which sees an external world.

The third name is representation-consciousness, in the sense that the ego (manas) represents an external world. As a clean mirror reflects the images of all description, it is even so with the representation-consciousness. When it is confronted, for instance, with the five objects of sense, it represents them at once, instantaneously, and without any effort.

The fourth name is particularisation-consciousness, in the sense that it discriminates between different things defiled as well as pure.

The fifth name is succession-consciousness [perceptions], in the sense that continuously directed by the awakening consciousness it retains and never loses or suffers the destruction of any karma, good as well as evil, which had been sown in the past, and whose retribution, painful as well as agreeable, it never fails to mature, be it in the present or in the future; and also in the sense that it unconsciously recollects things gone by, and in imagination anticipates things to come.

Therefore the three domains (triloka) are nothing but the self-manifestation of the mind.  Separated from the mind, there would be no such things as the six objects of sense.