The Tree of Enlightenment

sciousness into four active and four passive types of consciousness.
Normally, types of consciousness can be active or passive, and the
passive types can be reactive (resultant) or inactive (functional).
However, there are no functional or inactive types of consciousness
in this category because here the types of consciousness are
determining, not determined. ese eight basic types of supramundane
consciousness, four active and four passive, each correspond
to the path and the fruit of the four types of noble ones – the
stream-winner (sotapanna), the once-returner (sakadagami), the
non-returner (anagami), and the Arhat. Here I ought to point out
another distinction between supramundane and mundane consciousness.
In the mundane types of consciousness, active and
resultant types of consciousness can be separated by relatively long
periods of time: in other words, an active, conscious factor may not
produce its resultant factor until much later in the present life or
even until a future life. For example, in the case of the consciousness
of the form and formless spheres, the resultant consciousness
does not occur until a subsequent life. In the supramundane types
of consciousness, however, the resultant (or fruit) consciousness
follows the active (or path) consciousness immediately.
e eight types of supramundane consciousness can be
expanded to forty by combining each of the eight with each of
the five form-sphere absorptions. e four types of active supramundane
consciousness (the path consciousness of the streamwinner
and so forth) combine with the consciousness belonging
to the first absorption and so forth, so that there are twenty
types of active supramundane consciousness associated with the
four types of noble persons and five form-sphere absorptions.
Similarly, the four types of resultant supramundane conscious-
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